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 civil rights icon Ruby Bridges about her friend, Pulitzer Prize winning child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who died on June 4 at 97.
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President Trump has canceled planned strikes in Iran, claiming, once again, that a peace deal is near. This is just the latest salvo in a series of whiplash proclamations when it comes to the U.S.-Israel-led war in Iran.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked or delayed the promotions of several officers across the military branches, and a disproportionate number of those officers are women and people of color. Why? And how is Congress responding?
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It's finally here! The World Cup 2026 kicks off in Mexico City -- and NPR is there.
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NPR's Short Wave team talks about how air pollution affects the brain, what ancient squirrel poop reveals about prehistoric fauna, and a whale graveyard on the ocean floor.
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On the eve of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Gregg Berhalter, who coached the US team at the last men's World Cup in Qatar. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, about the political incentives for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue fighting with Iran.
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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with bestselling author Ann Patchett about her new novel Whistler.
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What were the broken promises of the 1979 Iranian Revolution? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with reporter Yeganeh Torbati about the new book she co-authored, Stolen Revolution.
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Israeli officials have called the emerging U.S. deal with Iran a "bad" deal, over concerns that it does not force Iran to give up its nuclear program at the start.
