Lulu Garcia-Navarro
Lulu Garcia-Navarro is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. She is infamous in the IT department of NPR for losing laptops to bullets, hurricanes, and bomb blasts.
Before joining the Sunday morning team, she served as an NPR correspondent based in Brazil, Israel, Mexico, and Iraq. She was one of the first reporters to enter Libya after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising began and spent months painting a deep and vivid portrait of a country at war. Often at great personal risk, Garcia-Navarro captured history in the making with stunning insight, courage, and humanity.
For her work covering the Arab Spring, Garcia-Navarro was awarded a 2011 George Foster Peabody Award, a Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club, an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Alliance for Women and the Media's Gracie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. She contributed to NPR News reporting on Iraq, which was recognized with a 2005 Peabody Award and a 2007 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton. She has also won awards for her work on migration in Mexico and the Amazon in Brazil.
Since joining Weekend Edition Sunday, Garcia-Navarro and her team have also received a Gracie for their coverage of the #MeToo movement. She's hard at work making sure Weekend Edition brings in the voices of those who will surprise, delight, and move you, wherever they might be found.
Garcia-Navarro got her start in journalism as a freelancer with the BBC World Service and Voice of America. She later became a producer for Associated Press Television News before transitioning to AP Radio. While there, Garcia-Navarro covered post-Sept. 11 events in Afghanistan and developments in Jerusalem. She was posted for the AP to Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion, where she stayed covering the conflict.
Garcia-Navarro holds a Bachelor of Science degree in international relations from Georgetown University and an Master of Arts degree in journalism from City University in London.
-
A snafu with Operation Warp Speed leaves at least 14 states short of the vaccine doses they were promised. Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks with WPLN's Blake Farmer about what that means in Tennessee.
-
Staff at Cedars-Sinai in LA got a surprise from a former COVID-19 patient last week: 800 homemade tamales. Margarita Montanez spent five days making them as a "thank you" for her care last spring.
-
Asian American voter turnout was up 91% on Election Day 2020 compared to 2016. Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood with Asian Americans Advancing Justice's Atlanta chapter describes how activists made that happen.
-
With a spike in COVID-19 infections, hospitals in California's San Joaquin Valley are suffering from a staffing shortage. It's made worse because hundreds of health care workers are quarantined.
-
The U.K. is the first country where regulators have authorized a major COVID-19 vaccine. The first doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be available next week. The U.K. has ordered 40 million doses.
-
University of Massachusetts Amherst political scientist Alexander Theodoridis talks about dehumanizing language in politics, what it can lead to and what we can do about it.
-
Smith entered the 2020 Tiny Desk Contest with his band Britton & The Sting. He says "Blackstronauts" is about finding joy: "I want us all to put on our freedom suits and fly together," he says.
-
This year's Tiny Desk Contest attracted plenty of talent, including standout entrant Mama Haze, aka California songwriter Meaghan Maples. Her song "On Your Side" was written during a time of healing.
-
The Latino USA host, who's spent a career covering those silenced in the media, now tells her own story in a new memoir. "We all have to work at making the immigrant story much more public," she said.
-
Every year, the Tiny Desk Contest attracts thousands of unsigned musicians. Lauren Eylise impressed the judges with "Peaks and Valleys," her song about toughing it out through hard times.