
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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Talk show host and The Real Housewives creator Andy Cohen's fifth book, The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up, describes how becoming a dad has completely changed his life.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna ahead of her performance at Coachella. She intends to sing her entire set in Arabic.
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The future of access to abortion pills is uncertain after two federal judges issued a pair of conflicting rulings on Friday evening.
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On his new covers album titled On Top of the Covers, T-Pain shows off the power of his natural singing voice.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Kate Davis about her new album Fish Bowl, which is told from the perspective of a dimension-hopping protagonist named FiBo.
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Depeche Mode return with its first album since the death of founding member Andy Fletcher. It focuses a lot, unsurprisingly, on the subject of life.
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Raised in lily-white Cape Cod, Mass. while one of the few persons of color around, Esperanza found their voice the old-fashioned way: by searching for it.
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Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts criticizes a bill that was passed in 2018. Senate Republicans say the recent measures to address the collapse amount to a "backdoor tax increase."
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with author Margaret Atwood about her new short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood.
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Saudi Arabia is making a major push to become an arts and entertainment destination, but is the effort succeeding in overcoming the kingdom's conservative image?