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 talks with retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula about the military planning underway in the U.S. amid the Israel-Iran conflict.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former Rep. Gabby Giffords and her executive director Emma Brown about political violence in the U.S. in the wake of the attack on Minnesota state legislators.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to museum director Ebony Howard about a new exhibit in Harpersville, Ala., that explores the lives of several Black families after emancipation.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Kate Johnson from the University of Virginia women's volleyball team about how the NCAA's plan to backpay college athletes could lead to pay inequity.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, about the stakes and the history of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
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NPR's Mary Louise talks with Chris Chibnall, author of Death at the White Hart.
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported from Maryland, where he lives, to a prison in El Salvador in March. Then, last week he was flown back to the U.S.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with authors Kelly Corrigan and Claire Corrigan Lichty about their new book Marianne the Maker.
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Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about federal efforts to enforce immigration law.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with retired U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Walter Gaskin about President Trump's activation of Marines and what comes with following orders on American streets.
