Melissa Block
As special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, Melissa Block brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting. Her work over the decades has earned her journalism's highest honors, and has made her one of NPR's most familiar and beloved voices.
As co-host of All Things Considered from 2003 to 2015, Block's reporting took her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska.
Her riveting reporting from Sichuan, China, during and after the massive earthquake in 2008 brought the tragedy home to millions of listeners around the world. At the moment the earthquake hit, Block had the presence of mind to record a gripping, real-time narration of the seismic upheaval she was witnessing. Her long-form story about a desperate couple searching in the rubble for their toddler son was singled out by judges who awarded NPR's earthquake coverage the top honors in broadcast journalism: the George Foster Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Now, as special correspondent, Block continues to engage both the heart and the mind with her reporting on issues from gun violence to adult illiteracy to opioid addiction.
In 2017, she traveled the country for the series "Our Land," visiting a wide range of communities to explore how our identity is shaped by where we live. For that series, she paddled along the Mississippi River, went in search of salmon off the Alaska coast, and accompanied an immigrant family as they became U.S. citizens. Her story about the legacy of the Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta earned her a James Beard Award in 2018.
Block is the recipient of the 2019 Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, awarded by the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fulbright Association.
Block began her career at NPR in 1985 as an editorial assistant for All Things Considered, and rose through the ranks to become the program's senior producer.
She was a reporter and correspondent in New York from 1994 to 2002, a period punctuated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Her reporting after those attacks helped earn NPR a George Foster Peabody Award. Block's reporting on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited by the Overseas Press Club of America in awarding NPR the Lowell Thomas Award in 1999.
Block is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University and spent the following year on a Fulbright fellowship in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband — writer Stefan Fatsis — and their daughter.
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A visit to a classic, hole-in-the-wall blues bar in Clarksdale, Miss., where owner Red Paden enlightens us about the blues and the Delta. -
In 1962, the University of Mississippi was at the heart of the desegregation battle. More than 50 years later, a junior on campus talks race, belonging and his sense of pride in Mississippi. -
The hours are long. The work is hard, and dirty. But this pig farmer in northeast Iowa loves what he does. -
Independence, Kan., has a dwindling population. Many businesses have closed up shop and the city's hospital shut down in 2015. But the folks who live there remain proud of their town and its history. -
To launch our road trip series Our Land, we travel across the country as Donald Trump takes office, and we meet freshly minted citizens at their naturalization ceremony in Kansas City, Mo. -
The former newspaper reporter was born in 1917, before women won the right to vote. She calls Hillary Clinton the most qualified presidential candidate she has seen in her lifetime. -
Filmmakers Carter McCormick and Paula Sprenger recently wrapped up a month as artists-in-residence at Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles west of Key West. No phone, TV, Internet or other people. -
Cuban migrants have received preferential treatment for more than a half-century. But as the U.S. and Cuba normalize relations, that policy could change and Cubans are racing to reach U.S. shores. -
After years of training and all the attention and hype, athletes can experience a profound letdown, even depression, when the games are over. They can struggle to fill a void in their lives. -
After her first Olympic gold medal in 2012, endorsements didn't follow. This time around, Shields isn't worried. "Everybody wants a tough, strong woman in their life!" she says.
