Melissa Block
As special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, Melissa Block brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting. Her work over the decades has earned her journalism's highest honors, and has made her one of NPR's most familiar and beloved voices.
As co-host of All Things Considered from 2003 to 2015, Block's reporting took her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska.
Her riveting reporting from Sichuan, China, during and after the massive earthquake in 2008 brought the tragedy home to millions of listeners around the world. At the moment the earthquake hit, Block had the presence of mind to record a gripping, real-time narration of the seismic upheaval she was witnessing. Her long-form story about a desperate couple searching in the rubble for their toddler son was singled out by judges who awarded NPR's earthquake coverage the top honors in broadcast journalism: the George Foster Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Now, as special correspondent, Block continues to engage both the heart and the mind with her reporting on issues from gun violence to adult illiteracy to opioid addiction.
In 2017, she traveled the country for the series "Our Land," visiting a wide range of communities to explore how our identity is shaped by where we live. For that series, she paddled along the Mississippi River, went in search of salmon off the Alaska coast, and accompanied an immigrant family as they became U.S. citizens. Her story about the legacy of the Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta earned her a James Beard Award in 2018.
Block is the recipient of the 2019 Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, awarded by the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fulbright Association.
Block began her career at NPR in 1985 as an editorial assistant for All Things Considered, and rose through the ranks to become the program's senior producer.
She was a reporter and correspondent in New York from 1994 to 2002, a period punctuated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Her reporting after those attacks helped earn NPR a George Foster Peabody Award. Block's reporting on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited by the Overseas Press Club of America in awarding NPR the Lowell Thomas Award in 1999.
Block is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University and spent the following year on a Fulbright fellowship in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband — writer Stefan Fatsis — and their daughter.
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In Kutztown, Pa., school nurses stock naloxone to treat heroin overdoses. "Kids aren't afraid of it," a guidance counselor says. "It's available and it's cheap." -
Two businessmen — one of whom was born in Cuba — have been granted permission to build the first U.S. factory on the island nation since 1960. They plan to produce small tractors for Cuban farmers. -
Friday marks Melissa Block's last day anchoring All Things Considered. She shares some of her favorite interview moments over her 12 1/2 years hosting the show. -
NPR's Melissa Block was in China when a major earthquake hit in 2008. As she wraps up her time as host of All Things Considered, she reconnects with a Chinese girl who has overcome great challenges. -
Seventy years ago Thursday, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. To mark the anniversary, Melissa Block and Audie Cornish read from journalist John Hershey's interviews with the city's survivors in 1946.
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M.C. Davis made millions gambling and buying up land and mineral rights. Now, he's restoring ecosystems destroyed by agriculture and timbering in his private preserve, one of the largest in the U.S. -
The pipeline's fate looms large in Washington. But for people living in Keystone XL's proposed path, the project will alter livelihoods and legacies — for better or worse, depending on whom you ask.
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The Keystone XL pipeline has created a heated debate over climate change and energy independence. We visit York County, Neb., to speak to people for whom the pipeline could be a tangible reality.
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Scott Farm in Vermont grows 100 apple varieties, some of them dating back to the 1700s. These apples may not look as pretty as the Red Delicious, but what they lack in looks they make up for in taste. -
Two Massachusetts girls were knocked into the water by a shark while kayaking near Plymouth. After half an hour in the ocean, they were finally picked up by the harbor master.
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The Islamist extremist group Islamic State has released a new video that purports to show the beheading of an American journalist named Steven Sotloff, whom the group threatened to kill two weeks ago.
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Regulations passed in Texas, which affected clinics that perform abortions there, have been blocked by a federal judge, on the grounds that they unconstitutionally restricted access to legal abortion.
