Melissa Block, NPR Biography
Host, All Things Considered
Melissa Block hosts NPR's newsmagazine All Things Considered, public radio's longest-running national program, with Robert Siegel and Michele Norris. She became co-host in 2003 – 18 years after joining the program in 1985 as an editorial assistant, when it was Block who booked interviews for then-hosts Noah Adams and Susan Stamberg. In her career with All Things Considered, she has also worked as an editor, director, senior producer and correspondent based in New York City.
For All Things Considered, Block frequently travels outside of the studio to report from the communities affected by the day's news. She reported from Blacksburg, Virginia, after the tragic campus shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007. In the days just after Hurricane Katrina hit, Block traveled to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to speak with people whose lives were upended by the storm. She also covered the 2005 high school shooting at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. And, as the U.S. was about to enter the fifth year of the Iraq War in 2007, Block offered a series of stories from Fort Hood, to gauge the impact of the war on its surrounding community of Killeen, Texas.
For a yearlong series leading up to the 2008 presidential election, Block has been reporting from Milford, New Hampshire, where she has been gauging voters' opinions of key issues and the candidates. She was also a contributor to NPR's 2004 election coverage, covering the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic national convention in Boston, and the run-up to the vote in the key state of Florida.
Block has reported on many major domestic and international events for NPR News. While based in New York, she covered police brutality and terrorism trials. Her reporting during September 11 was part of coverage that earned NPR News a George Foster Peabody Award. Reporting from Kosovo in 1999, Block's investigation into rape as a weapon of war was cited among stories for which NPR News won an Overseas Press Club Award.
Block graduated from Harvard University in 1983 with a degree in French history and literature, and spent the following year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Geneva. She is married to Wall Street Journal reporter, author, and NPR contributor Stefan Fatsis. They have a daughter and live in Washington, D.C.
