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.
-
Big Freedia may not be the earliest pioneer of bounce, the high-energy genre that calls New Orleans home, but she has been its most well-known ambassador.
-
Sutton, who appeared in more than 100 movies, plays and television shows over a career that spanned almost 50 years, died this past week of complications from the coronavirus.
-
The Latin American Library at Tulane University is digitizing a whopping collection of Cold War-era, must-hear entertainment — Spanish language radionovelas made by Cuban emigrés in Miami. -
The city of New Orleans is on a first-name basis with Quint Davis, who has happily occupied a central role in the city's beloved Jazz and Heritage Festival since the very beginning. -
Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire pays tribute to her Haitian roots with a new Krewe du Kanaval at carnival this year. The effort is a collaboration with Preservation Hall Foundation.
-
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. -
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.
-
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. -
An upcoming documentary highlights the life of the man many called New Orleans' best pianist in a hundred years. -
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.
