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 talks with John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, about the Biden administration's response to the weekend attacks on Israel.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Times of Israel correspondent Tal Schneider and University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami about how Israel and Hamas reached this point and what comes next.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Tony Allen, Delaware State University president and chairman of the Biden administration's Board of Advisors on HBCUs, about the funding shortfall HBCUs have faced.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Scott Douglas, contributor for Runner's World, about 23-year-old Kelvin Kiptum's record-breaking marathon run on Sunday.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with David McCloskey, whose new spy versus spy novel Moscow X is about a CIA officer scheming to recruit a Russian intelligence officer — and vice versa.
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The Army hasn't met its annual recruitment goal for nearly a decade. The Pentagon says it's changing it recruitment strategy — and bringing back its iconic 1980s ad campaign.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with now-retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley about the U.S. military's departure from Afghanistan.
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The nation's most senior military officer has retired. He talks to All Things Considered about Donald Trump, democracy, and whether the U.S. military has been politicized. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with journalist Micheline Maynard, about how high profits for major automakers over the past decade have become a central issue in the United Auto Workers strike.
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The union representing Hollywood writers has reached a tentative deal with the major studios, potentially ending a months-long strike. What does this mean for the industry, and still-striking actors?
