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 James Wolff, the pseudonym of a former British intelligence officer who now writes about them in spy novels. His latest book is Spies and Other Gods.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Sir Ian McKellen about playing a sour painter in The Christophers and why the 86-year-old actor hopes to never retire.
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NPR's Mia Venkat explains to Mary Louise Kelly why the internet has been obsessed with John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson about her new book, Project Maven, and the secret campaign within the Pentagon to bring AI into combat.
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For artist Thomas McKean, the New York City MetroCard was anything but mundane. He used cut-up bits of the cards to create hundreds of sculptures and collages, and still has a stockpile to work with.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben about their thriller, Gone Before Goodbye.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with the author Ann Packer about her new novel, Some Bright Nowhere.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Keri Russell and Allison Janney about their roles in season 3 of The Diplomat.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben about their new thriller, Gone Before Goodbye.
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Former CIA analyst David McCloskey keeps writing spy thrillers and the plots keep coming true. His latest book, The Persian, opens with an Israeli surprise attack on Iran.