Gwen Thompkins
Gwen Thompkins hosts Music Inside Out on WWNO in New Orleans.
Up until recently, she was an NPR foreign correspondent covering East Africa. She was based in Nairobi, Kenya, reporting on the countries, people and happenings from the Horn to the heart of Africa.
Since arriving in Africa in 2006, Thompkins has reported on the toppling of the Islamic Courts Union government in Somalia, ethnic violence in Kenya, insecurity in Darfur and Sudan's first nationwide elections in a generation. She has also written a series on the Nile River, traveling from the shores of Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Heading south, she has reported stories from South Africa and Antarctica.
From 1996 to 2006, Thompkins was senior editor of Weekend Edition Saturday. Working with Scott Simon she learned — among other things — that when a horse walks into a bar, the bartender has to say, "So, why the long face?"
While at Weekend Edition, Thompkins also reported from her hometown of New Orleans. In the months following Hurricane Katrina, she and senior producer Sarah Beyer Kelly filed stories on the aftermath of the storm and the rebuilding efforts.
Before coming to NPR, Thompkins worked as a reporter and editor at The Times-Picayune newspaper.
A graduate of Newcomb College at Tulane University, Thompkins majored in history and Soviet studies. While on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, she was in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell. Fortunately, she says, she was not injured.
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The pioneering singer influenced blues, jazz, rock and beyond with her powerful voice and inventive delivery, displaying a greatness rooted in the ability to channel her life story into her work.
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Fats Domino has died at 89. Antoine Domino Jr. was a founding father of rock 'n' roll and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. He daughter says he died of natural causes on Tuesday.
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The rhythm-and-blues legend who became one of the progenitors of rock 'n' roll — and reportedly sold more than 65 million records along the way — died Tuesday.
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C. Morgan Babst's portrait of a troubled New Orleans family that fractures further during and after Hurricane Katrina is poetic and suspenseful — but the drama sometimes drowns in too much detail.
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With technical mastery and endless style, Washington never sang the same song the same way twice. No singer since has had Washington's particular combination of talent, sass and pluck.
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Drummer Stanton Moore — a founding member of the funk band Galactic — has a new release with "Here Come the Girls" on a tribute album to the late songwriting producer Allen Toussaint.
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An upcoming documentary highlights the life of the man many called New Orleans' best pianist in a hundred years.
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Egyptians say that two colonial-era agreements forever guarantee them most of the Nile's flow. But other countries in the Nile River basin want more access to the water.
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Egypt uses more Nile River water than any other country, citing colonial-era agreements as proof of entitlement. But upstream, Ethiopia has begun asserting its rights and has visions of harnessing the river to produce more electricity and irrigation.
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East Africa correspondent Gwen Thompkins has spent the last year covering the news of the Continent, traveling from her base in Nairobi, Kenya to Somalia, Sudan and South Africa. Thompkins talks about her reporting and an upcoming visit by President Bush to the Continent.