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 former Trump national security adviser John Bolton about the president's upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Glenn Kessler, outgoing writer of the Washington Post's Fact Checker, about recent buyouts at the paper, and the current state of fact-checking.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Tim Podlogar, who researches exercise metabolism, about how elite cyclists consume thousands of calories each day to compete in the Tour de France.
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As Trump supporters continue to demand answers in the Epstein case, today the DOJ requested to question jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
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NPR filed suit this morning against President Trump and other administration officials over his executive order seeking to ban any federal funds from going to NPR or PBS.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, about the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers in D.C. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Rep. Pete Sessions, co-chair of the House DOGE Caucus, on how he plans to work with the Department of Government Efficiency. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Rebecca Allensworth, who teaches antitrust law at Vanderbilt Law School, about what comes next for Google and its users after it lost a major antitrust lawsuit.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about her new book The Art of Power and her interactions with the Bush White House during the 2008 financial crisis.
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D.H. Peligro, the longtime drummer for the iconic punk band the Dead Kennedys, died Friday at age 63.
