Melissa Block
As special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, Melissa Block brings her signature combination of warmth and incisive reporting. Her work over the decades has earned her journalism's highest honors, and has made her one of NPR's most familiar and beloved voices.
As co-host of All Things Considered from 2003 to 2015, Block's reporting took her everywhere from the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the heart of Rio de Janeiro; from rural Mozambique to the farthest reaches of Alaska.
Her riveting reporting from Sichuan, China, during and after the massive earthquake in 2008 brought the tragedy home to millions of listeners around the world. At the moment the earthquake hit, Block had the presence of mind to record a gripping, real-time narration of the seismic upheaval she was witnessing. Her long-form story about a desperate couple searching in the rubble for their toddler son was singled out by judges who awarded NPR's earthquake coverage the top honors in broadcast journalism: the George Foster Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award.
Now, as special correspondent, Block continues to engage both the heart and the mind with her reporting on issues from gun violence to adult illiteracy to opioid addiction.
In 2017, she traveled the country for the series "Our Land," visiting a wide range of communities to explore how our identity is shaped by where we live. For that series, she paddled along the Mississippi River, went in search of salmon off the Alaska coast, and accompanied an immigrant family as they became U.S. citizens. Her story about the legacy of the Chinese community in the Mississippi Delta earned her a James Beard Award in 2018.
Block is the recipient of the 2019 Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, awarded by the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fulbright Association.
Block began her career at NPR in 1985 as an editorial assistant for All Things Considered, and rose through the ranks to become the program's senior producer.
She was a reporter and correspondent in New York from 1994 to 2002, a period punctuated by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Her reporting after those attacks helped earn NPR a George Foster Peabody Award. Block's reporting on rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo was cited by the Overseas Press Club of America in awarding NPR the Lowell Thomas Award in 1999.
Block is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University and spent the following year on a Fulbright fellowship in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband — writer Stefan Fatsis — and their daughter.
-
U.S. winter Olympians — whose sports can defy gravity and involve breakneck speeds on snow and ice — share some of their most common nightmares in a special NPR Up First podcast from Pyeongchang. -
Biathlon is the only winter sport in which the U.S. has never won an Olympic medal. But hopes are high for Pyeongchang. "I've never seen our team in such high spirits," says biathlete Lowell Bailey. -
Olympic skeleton racers' chins rest an inch or two above the ice. "Obviously, you don't want your face scraping across the ice 'cause it does slow you down," says one. "But it also doesn't feel good." -
U.S. Olympic bobsledders explain their craft as they prepare for Pyeongchang in 2018. Success depends on immense precision. One false step or a miscalculated lean can spell disaster. -
Daniel Alarcón's new collection of short stories follows a young man living in a capital post-revolution and includes an Abraham Lincoln love story, set in modern-day Chicago.
-
Brothers Michael and Brian D'Addario are just 18 and 20 years old, but their retro, lush sound goes back decades. Their music has echoes of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bowie and more. -
NPR's Melissa Block reflects on the results of an annual survey about what most scares Americans. The nation's health care system, pollution and another world war rank in the top 10. -
American rocker Tom Petty has died at age 66. Petty is known for hits like "American Girl" and "Refugee" — hard driving paeans to everyday folks.
-
Some growers say that President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has made a chronic worker shortage even worse. -
More than 100,000 homes in the Houston area were damaged or destroyed by Harvey's floodwaters. Now the city is trying to figure out what steps should be taken to prevent or reduce future floods, if people should be allowed to rebuild in the flood zones, and if authorities will put a brake on development and agree to restore wetlands.
