Elizabeth Blair
Elizabeth Blair is a Peabody Award-winning senior producer/reporter on the Arts Desk of NPR News.
Blair produces, edits, and reports arts and cultural segments for NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. In this position, she has reported on a range of topics from arts funding to the MeToo movement. She has profiled renowned artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Mikhail Baryshnikov, explored how old women are represented in fairy tales, and reported the origins of the children's classic Curious George. Among her all-time favorite interviews are actors Octavia Spencer and Andy Serkis, comedians Bill Burr and Hari Kondabolu, the rapper K'Naan, and Cookie Monster (in character).
Blair has overseen several, large-scale series including The NPR 100, which explored landmark musical works of the 20th Century, and In Character, which probed the origins of iconic American fictional characters. Along with her colleagues on the Arts Desk and at NPR Music, Blair curated American Anthem, a major series exploring the origins of songs that uplift, rouse, and unite people around a common theme.
Blair's work has received several honors, including two Peabody Awards and a Gracie. She previously lived in Paris, France, where she co-produced Le Jazz Club From Paris with Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the monthly magazine Postcard From Paris.
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The new Netflix documentary Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution features interviews with dozens of gay and trans comics, archival footage and lots of jokes.
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Pixar's Inside Out was praised for helping kids understand how emotions affect their actions. Adults learned a few things too. The sequel's new characters include Anxiety, Embarrassment and Ennui.
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The term "book ban" is used a lot in media and elsewhere when addressing the rise in challenges to certain books being allowed in schools and public libraries. But is it more political hyperbole or a censorship alarm bell?
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The MacArthur Foundation is looking for ideas that would solve one of the biggest global challenges. The winning proposal will receive $100 million.
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Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was a paratrooper during WWII. After the war, he wrote a short story inspired by the experience. It's now being published for the first time in The Strand.
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PEN America has canceled its annual literary awards ceremony after nearly half of the authors nominated withdrew in protest over the organization's response to the Israel-Hamas war.
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According to PEN America, 4,349 books were banned from schools between July and December 2023, more than the entire previous school year. More than 3,000 of those bans were in Florida.
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Redbone's hit cracked the Billboard Top 5 this month in 1974. It was a first for a band with all Native and Mexican American members — but the song itself had a quietly political message, too.
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The International Booker Prize celebrates fiction that's been translated into English. This year's shortlist, announced Tuesday morning, features books in six languages from three continents.
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The shortlist for the Carol Shields Prize was announced Tuesday morning. The award recognizes "creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States."