Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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The pop star first drew attention with the 2014 hit "All About That Bass" — she's back with a new full-length album hearkening to that era, called Takin' It Back. -
The Puerto Rican artist returns with a new album, her first since protests galvanized San Juan and beyond in 2019. -
It's been over five months since Abu Akleh was killed on the job, most likely by Israeli forces. Her niece tells Morning Edition about her aunt's legacy and her family's campaign for accountability. -
It's a new school year and Jake Miller is not setting up his classroom in Pennsylvania. He's not getting to know a new group of eighth-graders. After 15 years of teaching, he quit. -
Mohammed Amer has spoken about his family's experience as Palestinian refugees in standup comedy. He spent nearly a decade turning it into a television series, which is arriving on Netflix this week. -
"We'll just bleep this interview to death," says Morning Edition host Leila Fadel ahead of her conversation with Demi Lovato about a harder-edged new album, HOLY F***. -
The PACT Act provides new access to services for American veterans struggling with the health effects of exposure to burn pits. But in Iraq, civilians who were exposed are still on their own. -
Alora Young is the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States. Her debut poetry collection Walking Gentry Home is a memoir written in verse. -
Kentucky's abortion ban went into effect immediately when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday morning. Opponents and supporters of the ban are now grappling with new realities.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Naomi McPherson, Katie Gavin and Josette Maskin of the band MUNA about their third album: MUNA.
