Quil Lawrence
Quil Lawrence is a New York-based correspondent for NPR News, covering veterans' issues nationwide. He won a Robert F. Kennedy Award for his coverage of American veterans and a Gracie Award for coverage of female combat veterans. In 2019 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America honored Quil with its IAVA Salutes Award for Leadership in Journalism.
Lawrence started his career in radio by interviewing con men in Tangier, Morocco. He then moved to Bogota, Colombia, and covered Latin America for NPR, the BBC, and The LA Times.
In the Spring of 2000, a Pew Fellowship sponsored his first trips to Iraq — that reporting experience eventually built the foundation for his first book, Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2009).
Lawrence has reported from throughout the Arab world and from Sudan, Cuba, Pakistan, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan for twelve years, serving as NPR's Bureau Chief in Baghdad and Kabul. He covered the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, as well as politics, culture, and war in both countries.
In 2012, Lawrence returned to the U.S. to cover the millions of men and women who have served at war, both recently and in past generations. NPR is possibly unique among major news organizations in dedicating a full-time correspondent to veterans and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
A native of Maine, Lawrence studied history at Brandeis University, with concentrations in the Middle East and Latin America. He is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Arabic.
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The Navy has renamed the USS Chancellorsville, a name honoring a Confederate victory, to the USS Robert Smalls, after an enslaved man who escaped the South by stealing a Confederate steamship. -
Guilty or innocent, the drug-corruption trial in New York of high-ranking former Mexican government official, Genaro Garcia Luna, shows the limits of the U.S. to win its decades-long "war on drugs." -
A prosthetics clinic that once served mostly American military veterans is now helping Ukrainian amputees get state of the art prostheses. -
A prosthetics clinic that once served mostly American military veterans is now helping Ukrainian amputees get state of the art prostheses.
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Navy Lt. Jack McCain trained Afghans to pilot Black Hawk helicopters. When Kabul fell, McCain and others helped the pilots escape to the U.S. But their permanent status is uncertain. -
A group called Vet the Vote is encouraging military veterans to help with the critical shortage of election workers in an atmosphere filled with heated rhetoric and threats against poll workers. -
Black vets fought overseas but returned home to segregation — which made it harder for them to benefit from the GI Bill. Some in Congress hope to remedy that injustice. -
After Hurricane Ian dumped record levels of rain across Florida, rivers flooded, leaving thousands stranded on newly created islands. -
Flooding cut off I-75 for hours as officials struggle to restore power and water to residents in the path of the storm's destruction.
