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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Why are so many love interests in romantic comedy or romance movies architects? NPR finds out from an Architectural Digest writer.
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Just a few weeks into his second term, President Trump froze funding for programs that play a big role in Global aid. One of those programs is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS or PEPFAR.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., about what he's hearing from and discussing with U.S. allies during the Munich Security Conference.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to Deborah Rutter, former head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in her first interview since the board installed President Trump as its new chair. -
NPR's Adrian Ma remembers his girlfriend, Kiah Duggins, who died in the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Potomac River in January after a mid-air collision.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with writer Jo Nesbo about his new thriller, Blood Ties. In it, two brothers with a dark history stand in contrast to the setting, a pretty little spa town.
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Researchers set out to catch baby turtles in the Gulf of Mexico to tag them and learn more about where they go when they scurry to the sea after hatching.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Rep. Pete Sessions, co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, on how he plans to work with the Department of Government Efficiency. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama about a new poetry anthology he edited called "44 Poems on Being with Each Other" and his own collection called "Kitchen Hymns."
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Iuliia Mendel, Ukrainian journalist and former press secretary for President Zelenskyy, about her recent op-ed in Time magazine.
