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.
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Melissa Block talks with Lolis Eric Elie, a writer and editor behind the HBO series Treme about a new cookbook written in the voices of the show's characters. Elie says it reflects both old New Orleans traditions and more recent influences. -
There was an unexpected hold-up on day two of the court martial of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of gunning down fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. His "standby" attorneys have told the judge that don't believe it's ethical for them to keep assisting a man who they believe is trying to get the death penalty.
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The Washington Post Company announced Monday that it has sold its newspaper business including the Post and its sister papers to Jeffrey Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. Bezos is buying the Washington Post properties as an individual not as part of Amazon.
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Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner is apologizing again after the publication of still more lewd messages and photos that Weiner exchanged online with a woman who is not his wife. But Weiner says he is not dropping his campaign for mayor of New York City.
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A friend and inspiration to the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris, Clark creates songs with the same precision and attention to detail he uses when he's building guitars.
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Pope Francis arrived in Rio de Janeiro on Monday and was greeted by adoring masses and protesters alike. It is his first foreign trip since becoming pope.
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There is a reported paucity of moving staircases in the Cowboy State. And that shortcoming has been posited as a argument for Wyoming to have fewer than its allotted pair of Senators. Audie Cornish and Melissa Block turn to the self-proclaimed escalator editor of the Casper Star-Tribune, Jeremy Fugleberg.
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Protests have erupted in Brazil over the past week. On Monday, there were tens of thousands of demonstrators on the streets of cities across the country. And again on Tuesday, demonstrations have continued. Unlike in Turkey, Brazil's leaders are adopting a conciliatory tone.
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U.S. and European intelligence has determined that the Syrian government has used Sarin chemical weapons on multiple occasions in its fight to suppress rebels. With this determination, the White House says aid for the rebels — perhaps in the form of heavy weapons — will be forthcoming.
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The so-called morning after pill will soon be available without a prescription, on pharmacy shelves, with no restrictions on age. That's because the Obama administration has dropped a long-running battle to keep age restriction on emergency contraception.
