Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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Political instability, the lasting effects of a devastating earthquake and a cholera epidemic, foreign political interventions and gang violence have all taken their toll on this nation. -
The news is a blow to UNC, which had its reputation damaged by its trustees' initial reluctance to grant tenure to Hannah-Jones. Howard also announced writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will join its faculty.
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With the changes, "we don't have to lie to get our passports. We can just be ourselves," said Dana Zzyym, an intersex person who has fought for more gender options on U.S. passports. -
The delta variant is the fast-moving strain of the coronavirus now found in 96 countries. It's expected to be the dominant variant in the U.S. within weeks. -
Law enforcement in Surfside, Fla., is using DNA samples from family members to help identify the victims recovered from the rubble. "It's very emotional," police official Alfredo Ramirez III says. -
"The concrete deterioration is accelerating," the Champlain Towers South's condo board president wrote as she asked for a $15 million special assessment for major structural repairs. -
The federal agency that examined the twin towers' collapse on 9/11 is one of many that are probing what went wrong at Champlain Towers South. -
Rescue teams search for any survivors within the sudden mountain of debris. "That's not an old building," said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett. "That kind of thing should not be happening." -
"We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive," said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. The number of fatalities has risen to four. -
With her father in charge of her life and her finances, the pop star has practically no autonomy. We spoke with a legal expert about what guardianships do — and what makes Spears' case different.
