On Spec

Tessa Fox is a freelance journalist, photographer and filmmaker focusing on conflict, humanitarian affairs and human rights in the Middle East. Currently based in Beirut, Tessa primarily covers Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

Her work can be found in Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Reuters, Al Jazeera, BBC, PRI The World, The National, The Daily Beast, The Telegraph, The Independent, Deutsche Welle, Al-Monitor, Middle East Eye, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SBS World News and VICE, among others.

She is also the Middle East stringer for Australian Associated Press where she has interviewed Australian ISIS brides in Syria, imprisoned male ISIS members, and lack of government action on repatriation.

As a correspondent Tessa has reported from Syria, Iraq, the West Bank, Lebanon, Turkey, Australia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Russia and various EU countries.

She was a finalist in the Ossie Award Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma Asia Pacific Prize, 2016 for ‘Generational Trauma: Fresh Battlegrounds from a Forgotten War.'

Tessa is an intermediate level in reading, written and spoken Arabic and Turkish.

She is a member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and Frontline Freelance Register (FFR).

Alisa Zaira Reznick is a journalist and photographer from Flagstaff, Arizona. After several years in Amman, Jordan she returned to Arizona to document migration, human rights and the environment from a new border. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Mother Jones, NPR, PRX’s The World and the BBC, among others. She currently covers border and immigration issues for Tucson’s NPR affiliate, Arizona Public Media. 

Born next to the Bosphorus, Özge Sebzeci is a documentary and portrait photographer based between Turkey and Germany focusing on stories about gender, migration and ecology. Her approach revolves around establishing trust and intimacy with the people she photographs. She is deeply committed to diverse perspectives in visual storytelling. Sebzeci is a grantee with the National Geographic Society and Magnum Foundation. Her work has been published in National Geographic, Time, Die Zeit, NPR, The Atlantic, NRC Handelsblad,  De Standaard, Horizonte, VG, and 140journos among others. She is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo and Varız Buradayız.

Pesha, who grew up in a circus, spent two years in a smokey newsroom in Cairo. She gave up the desk to freelance, writing extensively about refugees, gender and conflict in Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq. Her work has appeared in outlets including Foreign Policy, the Guardian, the Daily Beast, the New York Review of Books, the Intercept, and PRI. Pesha speaks Arabic and Spanish.

A physicist turned journalist, Umar’s reporting includes breaking news and investigative features, spanning four continents. He is a recipient of grants from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the National Geographic Society. He has been a correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and Al Jazeera English, reporting from the Middle East and South Asia, and a national investigative reporter with ProPublica. His work has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, the Intercept, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. Born in Pakistan and raised in New Orleans, he is fluent in Urdu and can do pretty well in Arabic and Turkish.

A former engineer, Oscar is a visual journalist who has covered the global refugee crisis from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.He has been published in NBC News, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, PRI’s The World, Catholic News Service, The Guardian, Ozy, National Geographic Traveler, and other outlets. Among other projects, Oscar is currently working on a National Geographic Explorer’s Grant with Umar to tell the stories of Afghanistan’s refugees. He’s fluent in Spanish, and conversational in French and Turkish.

A musician in a past life, in 2015 Shawn later quit his job at the United Nations to become a foreign correspondent. Since then, he has photographed war and migration in six countries, including the United States. Some recent work can be found in the Guardian, VICE, and Newsweek.

Margaux is a French and Canadian multimedia journalist. She has been based in Paris, Sudan, Kenya and the Central African Republic. In the beginning of 2018, after two years as a video editor with AFP’s Middle-East and North Africa bureau in Cyprus, she left her desk job to settle in Afghanistan as a freelancer. She is a correspondent for Le Figaro; the TV networks France 24 and Arte; and the French radio Europe 1 — and occasionally files for other media. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Le Figaro, Le Temps and others.

Fariba Nawa has been covering global news for 25 years from places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and now Turkey. She is also a speaker and author of the book Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey through Afghanistan. A native Afghan, Fariba’s fluent in Farsi/Dari and can get by in Arabic and Turkish. Some recent work can be found in The World, Time, The Christian Science Monitor,  The New Yorker, and The Financial Times.