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.
-
Athletes from around the world are arriving at the Olympic Village set up just for them. It's a huge place offering a chance to grab a burger or have your nails adorned with your home country's flag.
-
Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, and South Sudan, which followed three years later, are both sending athletes to the Olympics for the first time. -
Howard Shu, the sole U.S. men's singles player in badminton, is hoping to make an impact in a sport that's largely dominated by Asian countries. -
American women are expected to dominate team sports at the Olympics. That includes water polo, where they are defending champions and have medaled every time since the sport was introduced in 2000. -
She's already been to the Olympics twice and been a U.S. champion several times over. But at 31, Day-Monroe knows this may be her last shot at an Olympic medal. -
Vashti Cunningham, 18, is on a roll. She set a world junior record and won the world indoor championship in March, while still in high school. She has now turned pro and has her eyes set on Rio. -
He never imagined he could make it to the Olympics, but 28-year-old fencer Jason Pryor will be competing at this summer's games in Rio de Janeiro. He's ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in men's epee fencing. -
The smash Broadway hit Hamilton is bringing legions of new fans to the grave sites of Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, both at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. -
Guy Clark, one of Nashville's most renowned singer-songwriters, has died at the age of 74. This profile of Clark originally aired on July 23, 2013, on All Things Considered.
-
Soon after the terrorist attacks in Belgium, people created a makeshift shrine to the victims in a Brussels square. The city's archivists are documenting all the messages.
