Travel writer Sally O'Brien grew up in Australia and South Korea. She travelled widely through Europe and Asia during and immediately after her studies at the University of Sydney (B.A. Hons, English Literature), before completing a Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing at Macleay College.
After working in various Sydney bookshops, Sally started working as an editor for Lonely Planet, turning her hand to freelance writing in 2001 and authoring many guidebooks for destinations such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland.
She's a correspondant for jetsetter.com, writes personalised tour itineraries for fortnighter.com and is a freelance journalist for Australasian and international newspapers, magazines and businesses. She creates online content for organisations such as Paper.Li, the International Olympic Committee and Yahoo! New Zealand's Total Travel.
Since 2006 Sally has worked at large-scale sporting events as a reporter, supervisor or international manager, for news services at the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics in Italy, the 2007 IRB Rugby World Cup in France, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics in China, and the Innsbruck 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Austria.
Sally is based in Switzerland, where she lives with her husband, the photographer Denis Balibouse, and their son. She is currently creating an App about Switzerland for Sutro Media. In 2011 her first fiction work, Take-Away, was published by the Australian publisher [untitled] and she also contributed an essay to the award-winning non-fiction anthology The Sound of Silence.
She is a member of Editors Victoria, the Victorian Writers' Centre and the Australian Society of Authors (ASA).