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 visits the Hitteen U.N. Refugee camp for Palestinians in Zarqa, Jordan, and talks to residents about the war between Israel and Hamas.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with four women who are social influencers in Amman, Jordan — where the majority of the population is of Palestinian origin — about their thoughts on the war in Israel.
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Concern about a spread of the Israel-Hamas war ripples across the Middle East - as does growing anger at the U.S. for supporting Israel.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports from the occupied West Bank on how Israeli military and settlers hassle Palestinian farmers as they try to pick their olive harvest. The report takes a dramatic turn.
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Shopkeepers are struggling to keep their businesses alive inside Jerusalem following the Oct. 7 attacks.
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Zohar Palti, former Director of Intelligence of the spy agency the Mossad, talks about how this war started and how it ends.
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Yair Golan, a member of Israel's parliament and a major general in the reserves of Israel's military, talks about his instinct the morning of the Hamas attacks to put on his uniform and step in.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former Mossad agent Sima Shine about the intelligence failure that the Oct. 7 attacks represent for security services in Israel.
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Qassem Ali is one of the few people allowed to leave Gaza since the conflict with Israel began more than four weeks ago. He describes the anger and sadness he felt as he left. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Tom Dannenbaum, who teaches international law at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, about the law of armed conflict in the Israel-Hamas war.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to author Jennet Conant about her new book Fierce Ambition, a biography about Pulitzer prize winning war correspondent Maggie Higgins.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Jon Finer, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to the president, on how the United States feels about Israel's ground assault in Gaza.
