Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is 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 serves as guest host of NPR's Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday, in addition to report...
Cultural Diversity Roster
Find a Presenter
speaker
Susan Stamberg
Radio Journalist, who is a Special Correspondent for National Public Radio and guest host for Weekend Edition Saturday
Categories :
Bio
Full Bio
Nationally renowned broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg is 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 serves as guest host of NPR’s Morning Edition and Weekend Edition Saturday, in addition to reporting on cultural issues for Morning Edition.
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.
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.
Check Availability
Testimonials
Yakima was delighted to host Susan Stamberg for two days. We started with a dinner at a local art patron’s home (which is a collector’s museum in itself). Susan enjoyed a lovely meal amongst specially made chocolate radios and truffles and then spent a few minutes answering questions from our board. The next morning, I listened to most of the press conference which she handled adeptly. Throughout her time here we were impressed with her friendliness, intelligence, warm sense of humor, and integrity. We all enjoyed her presentation on artists who have changed our time and the clips she had selected were key to her program. Ms. Stamberg is curious about the life swirling around her today, making her an avid listener and intelligent communicator. This cannot be said of all nationally-known speakers.
Topics
Topics
SURVIVING BREAST CANCER
LEADERSHIP TODAY
FORGIVE US OUR PRESS PASSES
WHY MUSEUMS MATTER/WHY THE ARTS ARE IMPORTANT
MAKING COMMUNITY
INSPIRING WOMEN
WOMEN IN JOURNALISM
JEWISH MOTHERS
JEWS OF SHANGHAI
Four Who Changed Our Times
Writer Ernest Hemingway, director Elia Kazan, painter Georgia O’Keeffe, singer Frank Sinatra. This keynote speech delves into the impact Hemingway made on literature, when he invented a new, spare way to write fiction (both Barak Obama and John McCain named Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as a favorite book) and the impact Kazan made as a ’50s film and theatre director who introduced America to a new, raw way of acting and presenting drama. Then there is O’Keeffe, our most important female artist who showed us new way to look at the world around us. Finally, there is Sinatra who was the first great modern pop music singer and set a standard no one has ever been able to match. The speech is based on reporting and interviews done by Susan Stamberg.
Jewish Mothers
In this keynote speech, Stamberg discusses how the image of the Jewish mother has changed over the years, from stereotypical immigrant Yiddishe Mama, to J.d. Salinger’s Mrs. Glass, to Philip Roth’s Mrs. Portnoy, to linguist Deborah Tannen’s contemporary Mother. The speech incorporates examples from literature – ranging from hilarious, to sad, to moving, and back again.
Inspiring Women
This keynote presentation is a portrait of women of our time who have inspired, broken ground, led, had the courage to survive — all profiled by Stamberg in her reporting career. Georgia O’Keeffe — the most famous woman artist of the century and how she changed the way we look at objects and found the poetry in things. Miep Gies — who found, then saved the diary of Anne Frank, and helped the Frank family throughout World War Two. Betsy Wilson — not famous, but the courageous founder of Let’s Face It, a self-help organization for those with facial disfigurements. Nancy Reagan — how a former First Lady kept me out in the cold.
Arts Make Community
