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.
-
Free hunting license in Maine, free beer in New Jersey and a chance to win $1 million in Ohio. Across the country, cities and state are offering incentives to get people vaccinated against COVID-19.
-
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown about the recent spike in coronavirus cases in her state and her plans on reopening the economy.
-
Children as young as 12 can now get Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, but it may be hard to convince some parents to let them. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly and pediatrician Dr. Sally Goza discuss this hesitancy. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Biden, about new CDC mask guidance and other ongoing questions around the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
Rapid COVID-19 tests are now available at pharmacies in the U.S. Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health says these can help people wondering if they are infectious right now.
-
Unless people are packed together, "there really just is not much spread happening outdoors," Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University's School of Public Health says.
-
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health, who says outdoor transmission of COVID-19 is low and states may soon lift outdoor mask mandates.
-
Australia and New Zealand have launched one of the world's first "travel bubbles" between countries. People traveling between the two now no longer have to quarantine upon landing.
-
Coronavirus cases are surging in Michigan. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan's chief medical executive, about the state's decision not to implement new restrictions.
-
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with André Picard, health columnist with The Globe And Mail, about the reasons behind the relative slowness of COVID-19 vaccine rollouts in Canada.
