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 Salman Rushdie about his new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
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Salman Rushdie is a storyteller. So when you ask him to describe the day, in 2022, when he was attacked and nearly killed by a young man with a knife, Rushdie paints a vivid picture. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to journalist David Sanger about his new book, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, And America's Struggle To Defend The West.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, about what this escalation tells us about Iran's strategy.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former Israeli intelligence official Sima Shina about Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel, what might come next, and the risks for the Middle East and beyond.
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Sam McAlister was the BBC booker who persuaded Prince Andrew to go on record about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It's the subject of new Netflix movie Scoop. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Sam McAlister, who persuaded Prince Andrew to go on record about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It's the subject of new movie: Scoop.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with bioethicist and professor at Lehigh University, Michael Gusmano, about the ethics of using cloned, genetically modified pigs for human organ transplants.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with open source researcher Connor Plunkett, about his report with Bellingcat titled "Kinahan Cartel: Wanted Narco Boss Exposes Whereabouts by Posting Google Reviews."
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Days after Israeli bombs hit World Central Kitchen aid workers, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly spoke with the Council on Foreign Relations ex-president Richard Haass about the U.S. and Israel's relationship.
