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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A Finnish computer scientist had a dream that a blackbird was speaking to her in human language. So she devised a computer program to transform the sounds of the human voice into birdsong.
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Coronavirus cases are surging in Michigan. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan's chief medical executive, about the state's decision not to implement new restrictions.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Julie Fisher, the first U.S. Ambassador to Belarus since 2008, about last year's disputed presidential election and where diplomatic relations currently stand.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone about the ongoing U.S. women's national team lawsuit over equal pay and her continued priorities for the federation.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador To Russia. The U.S. imposed new sanctions on Russia Thursday, which are just the latest attempts to thwart the Kremlin.
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The Committee on House Administration questioned U.S. Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton about the role of the Capitol Police on Jan. 6.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with André Picard, health columnist with The Globe And Mail, about the reasons behind the relative slowness of COVID-19 vaccine rollouts in Canada.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., about President Biden's decision to withdraw all remaining troops from Afghanistan by September of this year.
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COVID-19 cases in Papua New Guinea have been surging. As hundreds become sick each day, the healthcare system is struggling to keep up. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with journalist Rebecca Kuku.
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Mary Louise Kelly talks with author Ross King about his new book The Bookseller of Florence, inspired by the history of the "Street of Booksellers" found in Florence, Italy.
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Host Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former U.S. Army Col. Christopher Kolenda about President Biden's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11 of this year.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Kate Elder, vaccine policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders, about the shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in poor nations.