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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A RAND Corporation survey found that Americans who served in the military support extremist views at rates lower than nonveterans. -
Veterans funding could be affected by the two high-stakes showdowns in Washington right now: budget talks and the possible default on America's debt. -
Veterans funding is at the heart of two high-stakes showdowns in Washington: budget talks and the impending default on America's debt. If the US defaults, the VA could could be short of cash.
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Jurors believed that Carroll's allegation of sexual abuse in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s was more likely true than not. They awarded her $5 million in total damages. -
It took decades for the VA to begin updating it's electronic health records system. After breakdowns, the VA stopped all work on the $16 billion update with the Oracle-Cerner electronic health record.
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The Navy has renamed the USS Chancellorsville, a name honoring a Confederate victory, to the USS Robert Smalls, after an enslaved man who escaped the South by stealing a Confederate steamship. -
A group of veterans who served at Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan during the Afghan War say they can't get the Pentagon to declassify information about the toxins they may have been exposed to.
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The U.S. invasion of Iraq 20 years ago gripped the entire nation. Today it is far from the minds of most Americans, though not for the veterans who served there. -
Guilty or innocent, the drug-corruption trial in New York of high-ranking former Mexican government official, Genaro Garcia Luna, shows the limits of the U.S. to win its decades-long "war on drugs." -
A prosthetics clinic that once served mostly American military veterans is now helping Ukrainian amputees get state of the art prostheses.
