Since 1971, when she helped launch National Public Radio as one of the network’s “Founding Mothers” (to borrow from the title of a newly-published book by Lisa Napoli), Susan Stamberg has been a familiar presence not only in our homes and offices but on our commutes. She’s even appeared in a New Yorker cartoon.

For fourteen years Stamberg served as co-host for All Things Considered, NPR’s award-winning afternoon news-magazine. She then hosted the network’s Sunday Weekend Edition, a delightful program that introduced listeners to Boston’s “Car Guys” and to a variety of other regulars, among them cartoonist Jules Feiffer and New York Times crossword guru Will Shortz. On one occasion she challenged writers from around the nation to contribute short stories to a series, curated by novelist George Garrett, whose only stipulation was to include a wedding cake in the middle of the road. That resulted in one of Stamberg’s best-selling books, a collection that now occupies library shelves alongside Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg’s All Things Considered Book and Talk: NPR’s Susan Stamberg Considers All Things.

A native of New York City, Stamberg holds a bachelor's degree from Barnard College and numerous honorary degrees, among them a Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of Silliman College at Yale University, and she 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. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has also been inducted into both the Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the Radio Hall of Fame.

Novelist E. L. Doctorow has described Stamberg as “the closest thing to an enlightened humanist on the radio,” and her thousands of interviews include conversations with Laura Bush, Billy Crystal, Rosa Parks, Dave Brubeck, and Luciano Pavarotti. On several occasions she’s chatted with Shakespeare scholar John Andrews, and he looks forward to welcoming her to an NAC series that has featured recent discussions with actors Judi Dench and Ian McKellen and playwright David Hare.

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