Quil Lawrence
Quil Lawrence is a New York-based correspondent for NPR News, covering veterans' issues nationwide. He won a Robert F. Kennedy Award for his coverage of American veterans and a Gracie Award for coverage of female combat veterans. In 2019 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America honored Quil with its IAVA Salutes Award for Leadership in Journalism.
Lawrence started his career in radio by interviewing con men in Tangier, Morocco. He then moved to Bogota, Colombia, and covered Latin America for NPR, the BBC, and The LA Times.
In the Spring of 2000, a Pew Fellowship sponsored his first trips to Iraq — that reporting experience eventually built the foundation for his first book, Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2009).
Lawrence has reported from throughout the Arab world and from Sudan, Cuba, Pakistan, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan for twelve years, serving as NPR's Bureau Chief in Baghdad and Kabul. He covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, as well as politics, culture, and war in both countries.
In 2012, Lawrence returned to the U.S. to cover the millions of men and women who have served at war, both recently and in past generations. NPR is possibly unique among major news organizations in dedicating a full-time correspondent to veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
A native of Maine, Lawrence studied history at Brandeis University, with concentrations in the Middle East and Latin America. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Arabic.
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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance served in the Marine Corps. But unlike many Republican war veterans, he is a leading voice against U.S. military intervention abroad.
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The 20-year-old gunman came within a matter of inches of killing the former president, but investigators are still struggling to understand what may have motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks. -
President Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon on Wednesday morning to LGBTQI+ service members removed from the military because of their sexual orientation/gender identity. -
For hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and their families, when the Pentagon orders them to find health care off base there is none. -
An ongoing NPR investigation into military health care reveals that four out of 10 U.S. military bases are located within a federally designated health care desert.
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The move gives mortgage companies more time to get a new program up and running to rescue veterans who were facing foreclosure through no fault of their own. -
The Coast Guard is holding it's strategic wargames at a base in Portsmouth, Va., and climate change is a key adversary.
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Former combat surgeons warn it won't be easy to restore medical readiness to where it was during the last war, much less where is needs to be for the next one. -
The Defense Department has been trying to cut the costs of medical care for its millions of troops, and retirees and their families. Are downsizing measures hurting military health and readiness?
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The VA halted foreclosures after an NPR investigation found thousands of vets were facing foreclosure and it wasn't their fault. Now the VA's unveiling a rescue plan that leaves some out in the cold.
