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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In an exclusive NPR interview, CIA Director William Burns addresses Taliban advances in Afghanistan, and what U.S. intelligence can do once the U.S. military leaves the country.
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In an NPR interview, William Burns says he has appointed a senior officer who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden to head the investigation into ailments that has afflicted U.S. officials worldwide. -
All the data so far shows the vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious disease or hospitalization, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Vaccination is also imperative to preventing mutations, he added. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Sandy Ala, a counselor working with Jewish Community Services of South Florida, who has been talking with survivors and families waiting for news in Surfside.
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President Biden and Russian President Putin have arrived at the Geneva villa where they will hold their first face-to-face talks as leaders. The two shook hands and ignored reporters' questions.
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Intelligence agencies from the U.S. and Russia are both trying to figure out what the other side is going to say, a longtime CIA operative says. China is probably trying to listen in, too. -
At 10 years old, Tanitoluwa Adewumi just became one of the youngest chess masters in the United States — and he's not done yet. He says he hopes to become the world's youngest grandmaster. -
Shaharzad Akbar of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says the viciousness of killing schoolgirls was especially devastating. She wants women present in peace talks.
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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. -
In the U.S., more than 1 out of 5 residents is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But elsewhere in the world, vaccination rates are much lower. Some poor nations have yet to receive a single dose.
