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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As the Biden administration enters its final weeks, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly discusses what may be ahead for U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine and Russia with outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan about the White House's Mideast policy priorities for the remaining weeks of the Biden administration.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Morning Edition about her interview with Trump Senior advisor Jason Miller.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Trump Senior Advisor Jason Miller about what the administration plans to accomplish in the early days of his second term.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes about The Return, an adaptation of Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. It's their first time on screen together in almost 30 years.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with New Yorker writer Jane Mayer about her latest article on Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.
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Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about democracy in South Korea following the president's brief declaration of martial law.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University in Chicago, about how to protect yourself from online fraud while holiday shopping.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Andrew Weissmann, a top lawyer at the FBI from 2011-2013, about President-elect Trump's plan to replace FBI director Christopher Wray with an ally, Kash Patel.
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From hiding, María Corina Machado says she'll continue to fight for Venezuelan democracy.
