About Mary Saliba

Mary Saliba is an Australian Lebanese journalist, lawyer and academic who was born, raised and educated in Sydney. Australia. Drawn to Lebanese culture while curious to explore Middle Eastern social and political affairs, Mary worked as a journalist for leading media network Al Jazeera mostly covering the Arab Spring. More recently Mary worked in Istanbul for the Turkish government’s national English broadcaster TRT World. Over 2019 and 2020 Mary contracted with a UN affiliated organisation based in Vienna to devise an international media campaign promoting inter religious and intercultural religious dialogue. Mary has also devoted her professional time to moderating interfaith conferences, international peace summits and supporting human rights development in Qatar, Jordan, Korea and Lebanon. Mary’s personal documentary on the impact of the Syrian conflict was selected by the 2014 Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in 2014 for screening. Over the last ten years Mary has produced and researched a number of global political documentaries for Al Jazeera and BBC World. In Australia Mary has worked for Sky News Australia and commercial national network Channel 7. Mary is now permanently based in Sydney with her parents and family. From a young age Mary experienced a natural inclination for language, writing and poetry. Throughout her life Mary has mainly explored writing as a tool for introspective reflection. The practice of writing, particularly poetry has provided an oasis, a shadowy cave, a place for soul searching, for yearning and healing. Her writing style therefore tends to be highly emotive, passionate, visually intense, romantic and at times melancholic. So far, writing for Mary is an emotive and abstract exercise, that is approached experientially but may not lead to anywhere. In this way, writing for Mary has evolved into a voyage for connecting to the self, connecting to the material world and connecting to the spiritual universe. As Mary tends to relate to the world journalistically, her writing is a form of recording and documenting life - including her own existence. Capturing moments of life through her writing is not logical, scientific or technical process but rather a sentimental, romantic and nostalgic experience. The process of writing itself becomes a journey - travelling from conflict to resolution, identifying a conclusion and then drawing wisdom from the original situation. Over time, writing has yielded a sacred space for Mary to release emotions as well the change to liberate unspoken thoughts. Growing up in Sydney, Mary became acquainted with the works of English writers such Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvia Plath, George Elliot (Mary Anne Evans) and her poetic favourite John Keats. Mary also enjoys reflecting on the works of several non western literature and poetry such as the infamous Khalil Gebran, Rumi, and her metaphysical favourite - Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. Mary loves to acquire knowledge about anything and everyone including global culture, philosophy, history, religion and spirituality, organic health, self development and self empowerment. She loves music, including world music, African, Latin and Arabic music - especially modern Lebanese artists. Mary thinks Netflix is the greatest thing on earth right now, spending a lot of time watching content from a variety of genres including historical, musical, mindfulness/health documentaries, global independent films, and brilliant cinematic films such as “The Duchess” and “Elizabeth”. At the moment Mary spends a lot of her time in Sydney with her family or doing sport like yoga as she is working on switching to a more plant based diet! Mary loves to research anything on google, designing beautiful spaces with interiors, learning new languages and practicing her Italian and Arabic.