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.
-
Seventeen missionaries were kidnapped by an armed gang in Haiti on Saturday. It was the latest in what experts are calling a kidnapping crisis in the country — a crisis largely driven by one gang.
-
When Shaandiin Parrish was crowned Miss Navajo Nation in 2019, she didn't expect to win. She also didn't expect to be carrying the honor two years later and through the health crisis.
-
Every year, the Tiny Desk Contest attracts thousands of unsigned musicians from across the country. Yosmel Montejo impressed the judges with "La Caliente," a song that reflects on life in Cuba.
-
With lyrics poking at the ways young women are scrutinized and exploited, Happier than Ever finds Eilish in some dark corners — but the pop supernova tells NPR she's got lots to feel hopeful about.
-
As the 10-year anniversary of the war approaches, a new book from the photojournalist Bassam Khabieh shares moments of normalcy and resilience against a backdrop of violence, displacement and fear.
-
Vaccination programs work best when as many people as possible get vaccinated, but Latinos are getting inoculated at lower rates. A group that helps immigrant workers is working to change that.
-
As cities offer vaccine appointments for people with a BMI of at least 30 — the medical benchmark for obesity — Dr. Fatima Stanford pushes back against the shame faced by those with the disease.
-
In Washington, D.C., hospital staff vaccinated 1,750 public school workers in one day. It was a hard-won success amid a fragmented nationwide vaccination campaign fraught with challenges.
-
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.
-
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.