Michael Sullivan
Michael Sullivan is NPR's Senior Asia Correspondent. He moved to Hanoi to open NPR's Southeast Asia Bureau in 2003. Before that, he spent six years as NPR's South Asia correspondent based in but seldom seen in New Delhi.
Michael was in Pakistan on 9-11 and spent much of the next two years there and in Afghanistan covering the run up to and the aftermath of the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda. Michael has also reported extensively on terrorism in Southeast Asia, including both Bali bombings. He also covered the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Michael was the first NPR reporter on the ground in both Thailand and the Indonesian province of Aceh following the devastating December 2004 tsunami. He has returned to Aceh more than half a dozen times since to document the recovery and reconstruction effort. As a reporter in NPR's London bureau in the early 1990s he covered the fall of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Before moving to New Delhi, Michael was senior producer on NPR's foreign desk. He has worked in more than 60 countries on five continents, covering conflicts in Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Chechnya, and the Middle East. Prior to joining the foreign desk, Michael spent several years as producer and acting executive producer of NPR's All Things Considered.
As a reporter, Michael is the recipient of several Overseas Press Club Awards and Citations for Excellence for stories from Haiti, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. He was also part of the NPR team that won an Alfred I DuPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan. In 2004 he was honored by the South Asia Journalists Association (SAJA) with a Special Recognition Award for his 'outstanding work' from 1998-2003 as NPR's South Asia correspondent.
As a producer and editor, Michael has been honored by the Overseas Press Club for work from Bosnia and Haiti; a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a story about life in Sarajevo during wartime; and a World Hunger Award for stories from Eritrea.
Michael's wife, Martha Ann Overland, is Southeast Asia correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and also writes commentaries on living abroad for NPR. They have two children.
Michael is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He's been at NPR since 1985.
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Plastic is choking our oceans. Inspired by Gandhi's activism, two young women on the island of Bali are on a mission to do something about it.
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A young Saudi woman is holed up in a hotel in Bangkok hotel after flying to Thailand en route to Australia, where she said she hoped to seek asylum from her abusive family.
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South Korea has really fast Internet. And really good tech. That's a really big problem when it comes to men who surreptitiously record women in all sorts of public places.
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South Korea is in a bit of a quandary. It's been making nice with the North since President Moon came to power. President Trump's dual track diplomacy has suited that policy well, until last week.
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On Monday, a group of South Koreans boarded a bus and traveled to North Korea for reunions with relatives who became separated before and during the Korean War.
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With tensions easing between North and South Korea, the two sides are reviving cross-border reunions that began in 1985. On Monday, 93 South Koreans will board buses to visit relatives in the North.
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At least 91 people are dead after an earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Lombok Sunday, jolting nearby Bali. The quake comes a week after another earthquake hit both tourist destinations.
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The group of Thai boys who were trapped in a cave have spoken to the media for the first time in a news conference.
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After two weeks, all 12 boys and their soccer coach were successfully rescued from a cave in Thailand. They were trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system after heavy rains flooded passages.
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More heavy rains are expected in Thailand, possibly forcing the hand of rescuers trying to free 12 boys and their soccer coach who are trapped in a flooded cave.