Penguin Speakers Bureau

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, reporting on the intersection of faith and politics, law, science, and culture. Her bestselling book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, was published by Riverhead/Penguin Group in May 2009. Publishers Weekly selected Fingerprints as one of the top 10 religion books of the year. Among other awards for her religion reporting, Barbara has received the American Women in Radio and Television Award, the Headliners Award, and the Religion Newswriters Association award for radio reporting. She was also selected for the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship in Science and Religion in 2005.

Before covering the religion beat, she was NPR’s Justice Department correspondent between 1998 and 2003. Her billet included the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, Florida’s disputed 2004 election, terrorism, crime, espionage, wrongful convictions, and the occasional serial killer. Barbara was the lead correspondent covering the investigation into the September 11 attacks. Her reporting was part of NPR’s coverage that earned the network the 2001 George Foster Peabody and Overseas Press Club awards. She has appeared on the PBS programs Washington Week in Review and The Lehrer News Hour.

Barbara came to NPR in 1995, after attending Yale Law School on a one-year Knight Fellowship. From 1982-1993, she worked at The Christian Science Monitor as a newspaper reporter in Washington, as the Asia correspondent based in Tokyo for World Monitor (the Monitor’s nightly television program on the Discovery Cable Channel), and finally as senior Washington correspondent for Monitor radio.

Barb graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in 1981 with a degree in economics and has a masters in legal studies from Yale Law School.