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 Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic" about her latest cover story for the magazine, "The New Propaganda War."
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with author Colm Toibin about his new novel Long Island. His main character opens her front door to a stranger who accuses her husband of having an affair with his wife.
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Hamas put out a statement saying it agrees to a proposal put forward by international negotiators to halt the seven-month war with Israel. But we are still waiting on details about the agreement.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with student journalists at Emory University, University of Notre Dame and the University of Texas at Dallas about covering the pro-Palestine protests on their campuses.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Time national politics reporter Eric Cortellessa about his interview with Donald Trump about 2025 and what he would do if he won the presidency again.
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As protests against the U.S. policy in Gaza unfold on college campuses across the country, the State Department is facing its own protests too. -
After 18 years of service in the State Department, Hala Rharrit discusses her resignation with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with David Scheffer, former ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, about the possibility of the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials due to acts in Gaza.
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As protests rise on college campuses around America, students reflect on the legacy of the campus activism of the late 1960s.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with University of Texas Law professor Lee Kovarsky ahead of the Supreme Court looking at the federal election interference case against former president Donald Trump.