Mary Louise Kelly
Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.
Previously, she spent a decade as national security correspondent for NPR News, and she's kept that focus in her role as anchor. That's meant taking All Things Considered to Russia, North Korea, and beyond (including live coverage from Helsinki, for the infamous Trump-Putin summit). Her past reporting has tracked the CIA and other spy agencies, terrorism, wars, and rising nuclear powers. Kelly's assignments have found her deep in interviews at the Khyber Pass, at mosques in Hamburg, and in grimy Belfast bars.
Kelly first launched NPR's intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad — so tough she wrote an essay about it for Newsweek — she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It's a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan's nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.
Kelly's writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Washingtonian, The Atlantic, and other publications. She has lectured at Harvard and Stanford, and taught a course on national security and journalism at Georgetown University. In addition to her NPR work, Kelly serves as a contributing editor at The Atlantic, moderating newsmaker interviews at forums from Aspen to Abu Dhabi.
A Georgia native, Kelly's first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International's The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.
Kelly graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with degrees in government, French language, and literature. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in European studies at Cambridge University in England.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with bioethicist and professor at Lehigh University, Michael Gusmano, about the ethics of using cloned, genetically modified pigs for human organ transplants.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with open source researcher Connor Plunkett, about his report with Bellingcat titled "Kinahan Cartel: Wanted Narco Boss Exposes Whereabouts by Posting Google Reviews."
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with reporter Anya Kamenetz about an Arabic-language remote learning program called "Ahlan Simsim." It's a show by the Sesame Workshop, created for Syrian refugees.
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In Michigan, a push to encourage voters to send President Biden a message about his refusal to call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza may have worked. Here's how his campaign moves forward. -
Alabama's new court ruling that frozen embryos should receive legal protections as "unborn life," leaves fertility clinics and parents-to-be in limbo.
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If the Russian president continues to burn through his reserves of oil and gas money, ordinary people will become a threat to his power, according to one outspoken activist. -
When the U.S. launched airstrikes over the past week in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the idea was to send a message to another country: Iran. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Erika Edwards, health reporter for NBC News, about the risks that unregulated intravenous treatments at med spas are posing to patients.
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Gun owners in California can no longer carry firearms into a range of locations deemed "sensitive spaces." It is already facing all kinds of hurdles in the courts. -
Philippe Lazzarini has visited Gaza three times since the war began. He says each time he can't imagine the situation could get more desperate — and then it does.
