Renee Montagne
Renee Montagne, one of the best-known names in public radio, is a special correspondent and host for NPR News.
Montagne's most recent assignment was a yearlong collaboration with ProPublica reporter Nina Martin, investigating the alarming rate of maternal mortality in the U.S., as compared to other developed countries. The series, called "Lost Mothers," was recognized with more than a dozen awards in American journalism, including a Peabody Award, a George Polk Award, and Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The series was also named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
From 2004 to 2016, Montagne co-hosted NPR's Morning Edition, the most widely heard radio news program in the United States. Her first experience as host of an NPR newsmagazine came in 1987, when she, along with Robert Siegel, were named the new hosts of All Things Considered.
After leaving All Things Considered, Montagne traveled to South Africa in early 1990, arriving to report from there on the day Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison. In 1994, she and a small team of NPR reporters were awarded an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for their coverage of South Africa's historic elections that led to Mandela becoming that country's first black president.
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Montagne has made 10 extended reporting trips to Afghanistan. She has traveled to every major city, from Kabul to Kandahar, to peaceful villages, and to places where conflict raged. She has profiled Afghanistan's presidents and power brokers, but focused on the stories of Afghans at the heart of that complex country: school girls, farmers, mullahs, poll workers, midwives, and warlords. Her coverage has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, and, for stories on Afghan women in particular, by the Gracie Awards.
One of her most cherished honors dates to her days as a freelance reporter in the 1980s, when Montagne and her collaborator, the writer Thulani Davis, were awarded "First Place in Radio" by the National Association of Black Journalists for their series "Fanfare for the Warriors." It told the story of African-American musicians in the military bands from WW1 to Vietnam.
Montagne began her career in radio pretty much by accident, when she joined a band of friends, mostly poets and musicians, who were creating their own shows at a new, scrappy little San Francisco community station called KPOO. Her show was called Women's Voices.
Montagne graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley. Her career includes teaching broadcast writing at New York University's Graduate Department of Journalism (now the Carter Institute).
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In the new film The Sea Inside, Spanish actor Javier Bardem plays Ramon Sampedro, a 55-year-old quadriplegic who fought the Spanish government for 30 years for the right to die. NPR's Renee Montagne talks to Bardem about the mental and physical challenges of the role.
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For those with less-than-perfect singing voices, technology offers help. A number of computer programs can correct pitch to make just about anyone sound in tune -- even NPR's Renee Montagne, who lends her voice to show how the software works.
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Zap Mama's CD Ancestry in Progress charts a path from African a capella to a global vision of soul. Leader Marie Daulne says her new songs weave vocal styles from Africa and the East with technologies and music of the West. Hear NPR's Renee Montagne.
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The Divine Husband imagines the love story behind one of the most famous poems by Jose Marti, a legendary 19th-century Cuban poet and patriot. The sweeping tale blends history and fiction in the U.S. and Latin America. Hear NPR's Renee Montagne and author Francisco Goldman.
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Take two hip-hop artists on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean, add a dash of online communication, and you get the musical duo Foreign Exchange. NPR's Renee Montagne talks to Emcee Phonte Coleman of North Carolina and producer Nicolay Rook of the Netherlands about their collaboration and Connected, the album it sparked.
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Novelist Alan Hollinghurst is awarded this year's prestigious Man Booker Prize. Hollinghurst won for The Line of Beauty, the first gay-themed novel to win the British literary honor in its 36-year history. Hear NPR's Renee Montagne and Rebecca Jones of the BBC.
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How does a film aficionado convince people to go to a movie that doesn't offer the easy escape of a blockbuster? NPR's Renee Montagne talks to Los Angeles Times and film critic Kenneth Turan about his new book, Never Coming to a Theater Near You.
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Tony-winner Audra McDonald talks about her new album, Happy Songs. It's a departure from the more serious material she's taken on in the past. She interprets lesser-known songs from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, by composers such as Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington.