Who is On Spec?
At the moment, we are based in Istanbul, but we travel far and wide in conflict zones and wherever the story takes us.
Fariba Nawa • Host /Istanbul
Mother of two inquisitive and rambunctious girls, Fariba has been covering global news for 20 years from places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and 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 New Yorker, PRI, and the Financial Times.
Margaux Benn /Kabul
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.
Shawn Carrié /Istanbul
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.
Oscar Durand /New York
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.
Umar Farooq /Istanbul
A physicist turned journalist, Umar’s reporting includes breaking news and investigative features, spanning four continents. He is a Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting grantee, and is currently working on a National Geographic Explorer’s Grant with Oscar, working to tell the stories of Afghanistan’s refugees. A regular reporter for The Los Angeles Times based out of Istanbul, 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.
Pesha Magid /Baghdad
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.
Özge Sebzeci /Istanbul
Born next to the Bosphorus, Özge’s reporting and photography reveals a seldom-seen Turkey. Özge’s work, often combining documentary and art photography, caught the eye of the Magnum Foundation which awarded her a fellowship.
Her work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, News Deeply, NRC Handelsblad, De Standaard, and VG, among others. She is fluent in Turkish and French.
Alisa Zaira Reznick /Arizona
Alisa Zaira Reznick is a journalist and photographer from Flagstaff, Arizona. She has spent the last several years between the Middle East and the American Southwest documenting stories about migration, human rights, the environment, and the intersection of all three.
Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera, the BBC, PRI and TIME, among others.
