Susan Stamberg
Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is a special correspondent for NPR.
Stamberg is the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program, and has won every major award in broadcasting. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame. An NPR "founding mother," Stamberg has been on staff since the network began in 1971.
Beginning in 1972, Stamberg served as co-host of NPR's award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered for 14 years. She then hosted Weekend Edition Sunday, and now reports on cultural issues for Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday.
One of the most popular broadcasters in public radio, Stamberg is well known for her conversational style, intelligence, and knack for finding an interesting story. Her interviewing has been called "fresh," "friendly, down-to-earth," and (by novelist E.L. Doctorow) "the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio." Her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Dave Brubeck, and Luciano Pavarotti.
Prior to joining NPR, she served as producer, program director, and general manager of NPR Member Station WAMU-FM/Washington, DC. Stamberg is the author of two books, and co-editor of a third. Talk: NPR's Susan Stamberg Considers All Things, chronicles her two decades with NPR. Her first book, Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg's All Things Considered Book, was published in 1982 by Pantheon. Stamberg also co-edited The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road, published in 1992 by W. W. Norton. That collection grew out of a series of stories Stamberg commissioned for Weekend Edition Sunday.
In addition to her Hall of Fame inductions, other recognitions include the Armstrong and duPont Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ohio State University's Golden Anniversary Director's Award, and the Distinguished Broadcaster Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.
A native of New York City, Stamberg earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College, and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees including a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College, Yale University, and has served on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award Foundation and the National Arts Journalism Program based at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Stamberg has hosted a number of series on PBS, moderated three Fred Rogers television specials for adults, served as commentator, guest or co-host on various commercial TV programs, and appeared as a narrator in performance with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her voice appeared on Broadway in the Wendy Wasserstein play An American Daughter.
Her late husband Louis Stamberg had his career with the State Department's agency for international development. Her son, Josh Stamberg, an actor, appears in various television series, films, and plays.
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Hanoi, Hue, Danang and Saigon, were city names that were stamped on the American psyche a half-century ago, when the U.S. waged war in Vietnam. The once war-torn, Southeast Asian nation has made great strides to leave its troubled past behind.
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Richard Diebenkorn's studio stood next to the Pacific Ocean, but he was more interested in light than water. For 20-plus years, Diebenkorn worked on 145 paintings — incandescent, geometric canvases that captured the soft, pale light of Southern California. -
Life is a collection of "extraordinarily ordinary moments," says the Academy Award-winning director, if only people would "wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is." Payne's latest film, The Descendants, puts the power of everyday moments to use, and is nominated for five Oscars. -
Some of My Lives is a lively chronicle of postwar Paris and the author's celebrated circle, a movable feast that included Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Gertrude Stein. -
Every four years in January, Washington plays host to the country's biggest "prom." Inaugural balls bring out happy winners, administration bigwigs and a gown — on the first lady — that will become part of history. A Smithsonian exhibition displays some of those gowns.
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"She was simply the center of my life," says Joan Didion, whose daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, died at age 39. Her death came just two years after the death of Didion's husband, John Gregory Dunne. -
The Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright wrote about the struggle by her generation to balance professional and family life. A new biography sheds light on the links between Wasserstein's life and the characters she created. -
From 1915 until 1946, some 25,000 pieces of paper were exchanged between painter Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The correspondence tracks their relationship from acquaintances to admirers to lovers to man and wife to exasperated — but still together — long-marrieds. -
Gone with the Wind sold one million copies in its first six months, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and brought an explosion of unexpected, unwished-for celebrity to its author. NPR's Susan Stamberg visits the tiny Atlanta apartment where Mitchell wrote the famous novel 75 years ago. -
As is true for so many great musicians, the compositions of George Gershwin live on well after his death. Case in point: Jazz musician Gordon Goodwin has arranged Gershwin's beloved piece for his brassy Big Phat Band.
