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 speaks with Kara Trainor, whose son was born dependent on opioids because of her addiction, about what the Purdue Pharma settlement could mean for her and her family.
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It's been five years since the U.S. pulled out of the nuclear deal. How close is Iran to a bomb? What can the U.S. do to stop them? And how are regional and global shifts changing the equation?
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former FBI Director James Comey about his new thriller Central Park West.
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Patricia Arquette talks about her role in the new Apple TV+ series, High Desert.
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A crew of four astronauts, on a private Axiom Space trip run by SpaceX, has reached the International Space Station. Among them: mission commander Peggy Whitson, 63, and no stranger to orbit.
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Mutaqee Akbar, the president of the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP, talks about the organization's travel advisory for Black tourists visiting Florida.
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Author Emma Cline talks about her new novel The Guest and why she is drawn to writing characters looking in from the outside.
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R.F. Kuang talks about her new novel Yellowface and why she wanted to write a book about cultural appropriation in the publishing world.
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Kara Jackson is mostly known for her poetry. But singing was her first love, and she's now out with her debut album, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Jon Ralston, CEO of The Nevada Independent, about why he strongly supported the CNN's town hall with Trump — and then changed his mind minutes into the broadcast.