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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Alexei Navalny's death has shaken the families of other political prisoners in Russia. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of jailed opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza.
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If the Russian president continues to burn through his reserves of oil and gas money, ordinary people will become a threat to his power, according to one outspoken activist. -
Daniel Roher, director of the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, talks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about his time with Alexei Navalny, who was determined to return to Russia despite the risk.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks to Bruce Lynn, the executive director of the Great Lake Shipwreck Historical Society, about the discovery of the Arlington shipwreck in Lake Superior.
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NPR remembers William "Bill" Post today. He was the co-creator of the Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, and died on Saturday, February 10th at 96 years old.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut about the prospect of U.S. military aid for Ukraine.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic, about Russia's continued appeal to the American right.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with ex-Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
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When the U.S. launched airstrikes over the past week in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the idea was to send a message to another country: Iran. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Norman Roule, a veteran of the CIA and former mission manager for Iran for the Director of National Intelligence, about the so-called "Axis of Resistance."
