Liz Sly

Liz Sly (born in the United Kingdom) is a British journalist based in Beirut.

She is currently a correspondent with The Washington Post covering Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other countries of the Middle East. She graduated from the University of Cambridge. She joined the Post in 2010 and previously worked for the Chicago Tribune from 1987 until 2003 in the roles of correspondent for Africa and Beijing.

Her popular Twitter account was the subject of an academic paper about the viral impact of her retweet of a photo taken by Turkish journalist Nilufer Demir of a dead toddler washed up on a beach on 2 September 2015. Her tweet was retweeted over 7,000 times and the reactions prompted her to write an article about her choice to retweet the image, commenting that she has been searching for years for ways to convey the extent of the problems in Syria and was shocked that people might find her tweet sensitive in any way. The week before, Sly was interviewed on NPR about the Destruction of Palmyra.

Sly has been covering the Middle East since covering Baghdad at the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.