Johann Hari is an award-winning journalist who writes twice-weekly for the Independent, one of Britain's leading newspapers. He also writes for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, The New Republic, El Mundo, The Guardian, , The Melbourne Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, South Africa's Star, The Irish Times, and a wide range of other international newspapers and magazines.

In 2007 he was named Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International for his reporting on the war in Congo. The judges called his reports 'outstanding', 'beautifully written' and 'brave'. He has been nominated for many other awards, including Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards, the Orwell Prize, the David Watt Prize and others. He has reported from Iraq, the Gaza Strip, the Congo, Bangladesh, India, the United States, Venezuela, Rwanda, Peru, Mexico, the Central African Republic, Syria and the United States.

He has interviewed many world figures, including the Dalai Lama, Tony Blair, Hugo Chavez, George Michael, Dolly Parton, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bill Buckley, Simon Peres, Martin McGuiness, Abu Hamza, Chuck Palahniuk and others. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN, NBC's Today program, the BBC's , Question Time, Head-to-Head, Dateline: London, Newsnight and the Moral Maze, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and others. He appears regularly as an arts critic on Newsnight Review.

He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1979. He has lived in London since he was a baby, and is now based in Brick Lane, East London. His father Eduard is a bus driver, and his mother Violet works in a refuge for victims of domestic violence. Educated at King's College, Cambridge, as the first person from his family to go to university, he graduated with a Double First in Social and Political Science in 2001.

He began his career as a staff reporter for the New Statesman in 2001, and has also been a columnist for the Evening Standard, London's newspaper. He is now a Senior Contributing Editor to Attitude, Britain's best-selling gay magazine, and he is a patron of the magazine Safer Society, which campaigns for more liberal and rehabilitative law and order policies.

His first book, 'God Save the Queen?', was published in 2003. Christopher Hitchens called it 'superb', commenting, "This is the plain proof of the child-sacrifice that stands at the centre of our most sinister institution." Julie Burchill said, "I love this book! It's like eating a whole box of chocolates all in one go." It was described as "brilliant" by Victor-Lewis Smith in the Evening Standard and "excellent" by Janet Street-Porter in the Independent on Sunday.

His play, 'Going Down in History', was performed at the Garage Theatre, Edinburgh in 2002 to critical acclaim. It was described as "a thoroughly entertaining, rather sexy attempt to put the personal into the political" by Lynn Gardner in the Guardian and as "excellent" by the Telegraph's Charles Spencer, who called Johann "the new David Hare."

Since he began work as a journalist, Johann has been attacked in print by the National Review, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, John Pilger, Daniel Craig, Peter Oborne, Private Eye, the Socialist Worker, Cristina Odone, Jon Gaunt, the Spectator, Andrew Neil, Mark Steyn, the British National Party, Medialens, al Muhajaroun and Richard Littlejohn. 'Prince' Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Britain, has accused Johann of "waging a private jihad against the House of Saud". (He's right). Johann has been called 'Maoist' by Nick Cohen, "Stalinist" by Noam Chomsky, 'Horrible Hari' by Niall Ferguson, "an uppity little queer" by Bruce Anderson, 'a drug addict' by George Galloway, "fat" by the Dalai Lama and "a cunt" by Busted.