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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On a new album, the classical stars revisit the concerto Williams composed specifically for Ma, as well as some of Williams' most affecting film scores. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Ukrainian economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko about the cost of rebuilding Ukraine after the war.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Jean Lee, a journalist specializing in North Korea, about the country's report of a major disease outbreak that state media is not calling COVID-19, yet.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with rising opera star and break dancer Jakub Jozef Orlinski, whose new album "Farewells" is a collection of Polish opera classics, little known to the rest of the world.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Sweden's Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist after his meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, about his country's decision on joining NATO.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who appeared in Buffalo with President Biden after the mass shooting, about gun violence and extremism in the state.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Kristy Ironside, a Russia historian at McGill University, about the significance of McDonald's leaving Russia.
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This year's winner is a songwriter from Boston, Mass., whose winning song is an ode to feeling like she doesn't fit neatly into any one box.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Emma Straub about her new novel, This Time Tomorrow, in which the central character is turning 40 — but wakes up and is age 16 again.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Downton Abbey executive producer Julian Fellowes about the latest chapter in the Crawley family's story, Downton Abbey: A New Era.
