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.
-
An NPR/Ipsos poll shows a stark partisan split on laws that prevent transgender youth from accessing medical care for gender transition. -
Do transgender women and girls have a constitutional right to play on women's sports teams? That question was argued before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. -
President Trump's recent executive order banning some diversity training has had a widespread effect as government agencies, contractors and universities scramble to figure out how to comply. -
While the political focus may be on mass shootings, states are far more often using red flag laws to prevent cases of individual gun violence, including suicide. -
More than half the states passed dozens of gun control measures in 2018, including what are known as "red flag" laws, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
-
Deborah Amos, author of Eclipse of the Sunnis, talks about the extremist vision for establishing a new Sunni caliphate, as well as what it might look like if a group like ISIS managed to do so.
-
For the first time since 1962, there are co-champions at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Teens Ansun Sujoe and Sriram Hathwar tied when the pair exhausted the official list of words.
-
At Arlington National Cemetery, President Obama honored the sacrifices of those who died while serving in the military. We remember the stories of some of those who died in America's longest war.
-
Scott Gold, senior writer for The Los Angeles Times discusses Elliot Rodger, the man who police say went on a stabbing and shooting rampage in Isla Vista, Calif., last week before killing himself.
-
Herb Jeffries was the first singing star of all-black cowboy movies in the late 1930s, which garnered him the nickname the "Bronze Buckeroo." He died Sunday in California, at age 100.
