Jacki Lyden
Longtime listeners recognize Jacki Lyden's voice from her frequent work as a substitute host on NPR. As a journalist who has been with NPR since 1979, Lyden regards herself first and foremost as a storyteller and looks for the distinctive human voice in a huge range of national and international stories.
In the last five years, Lyden has reported from diverse locations including Paris, New York, the backstreets of Baghdad, the byways around rural Kentucky and spent time among former prostitutes in Nashville.
Most recently, Lyden focused her reporting on the underground, literally. In partnership with National Geographic, she and photographer Stephen Alvarez explored the catacombs and underground of the City of Light. The report of the expedition aired on Weekend Edition Sunday and was the cover story of the February 2011 National Geographic magazine.
Lyden's book, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, recounts her own experience growing up under the spell of a colorful mother suffering from manic depression. The memoir has been published in 11 foreign editions and is considered a memoir classic by The New York Times. Daughter of the Queen of Sheba has been in process as a film, based upon a script by the A-list writer, Karen Croner. She is working on a sequel to the book which will be about memory and what one can really hold on to in a tumultuous life.
Along with Scott Simon, current host of Weekend Edition Saturday, and producer Jonathan Baer, Lyden helped to pioneer NPR's Chicago bureau in 1979. Ten years later, Lyden became NPR's London correspondent and reported on the IRA in Northern Ireland.
In the summer of 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Lyden went to Amman, Jordan, where she covered the Gulf War often traveling to and reporting from Baghdad and many other Middle Eastern cites. Her work supported NPR's 1991 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for Gulf War coverage. Additionally, Lyden has reported from countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. In 1995, she did a groundbreaking series for NPR on Iran on the emerging civil society and dissent, called "Iran at the Crossroads."
At home in Brooklyn on September 11, 2001, Lyden was NPR's first reporter on the air from New York that day. She shared in NPR's George Foster Peabody Award and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lyden later covered the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In 2002, Lyden and producer Davar Ardalan received the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television for best foreign documentary for "Loss and Its Aftermath." The film was about bereavement among Palestinians and Jews in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
That same year Lyden hosted the "National Story Project" on Weekend All Things Considered with internationally-acclaimed novelist Paul Auster. The book that emerged from the show, I Thought My Father Was God, became a national bestseller.
Over the years, Lyden's articles have been publications such as Granta, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is a popular speaker, especially on mental health.
A graduate of Valparaiso University, Lyden was given an honorary Ph.D. from the school in 2010. She participated in Valparaiso's program of study at Cambridge University and was a 1991-92 Benton Fellow in Middle East studies at the University of Chicago.
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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is in Sri Lanka to discuss how to handle the quarter-million people displaced by that island nation's 25-year civil war. The government said more than 6,200 of its forces were killed and almost 30,000 wounded in the final three years of its war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended last weekend.
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The Mississippi presidential primary is very different from those in Texas and Ohio, which Democrat Hillary Clinton won. Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-American voters in the country; if voting trends continue, that should benefit her rival, Barack Obama.
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In economically troubled Ohio, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been trying to out-do each other in their opposition to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Republican contender John McCain joined in with his views on NAFTA this week, too.
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Former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif says the U.S. must "put its foot down" with President Pervez Musharraf if it is sincere in its support of democracy in Pakistan. He calls the U.S. response so far to Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule "lukewarm" and "disturbing."
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In the summer of 1967, violence broke out in black neighborhoods across the country, even in small cities and towns like Cambridge, Md. In July 1967, arsonists set a fire that spread through two blocks in Cambridge, where racial tensions had been simmering for years.
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The small town of Cambridge, Md., went up in flames 40 years ago this summer. A speech by black activist H. Rap Brown helped incite unrest there. But the town's problems were rooted in a painful history of racial discrimination.
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In Pakistan on Saturday, pro- and anti-government demonstrators clashed in the city of Karachi, leaving 30 people dead and more than 100 wounded. Gunfire erupted in several parts of the city. The violence was prompted by a visit to Karachi by Pakistan's chief justice, a man President Musharraf suspended two months ago in what critics of the government say is a battle over judicial independence. Jacki Lyden talks with Phillip Reeves. -
As America celebrates Mother's Day, Jacki Lyden reflects on the meaning of motherhood through the eyes of her aunt, Ellie Lyden. Nearly 100, Ellie has long nurtured the small village of Clifden, Ireland, from her rose-covered cottage.
