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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President Trump and Putin are meeting to discuss the end of Russia's war in Ukraine without Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Ukrainian journalist Iuliia Mendel.
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Karin Slaughter talks about her 25th book -- "We are All Guilty Here" - with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. It's a small town murder mystery - that twists and turns until the end.
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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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A legal fight in New Jersey has broken out over the Trump administration's choice for top federal prosecutor in the state, paralyzing criminal proceedings statewide.
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NPR Music's 2025 Tiny Desk Contest yielded thousands of entries, including some standouts in the pop and rock categories.
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The Short Wave team talks about spider origins, why the odds of having a girl or a boy aren't 50-50, and what the Orion constellation reveals about the life cycles of stars.
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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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NPR Music's 2025 Tiny Desk Contest got more than 7,000 entries, including some standouts in the folk and country genres.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with mycologist Aishwarya Veerabahu about the rapid spread of golden oyster mushrooms across North America. It's the subject of a new study authored by Veerabahu.