Narrators

Talking with Emily Janice Card

2010 Best Voice in Fiction: THE LOST SUMMER OF LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Emily Janice Card had been an actor in the theater before she auditioned for audiobook producer Stefan Rudnicki's Skyboat Road Company in Los Angeles. She attributes her narrator training to Rudnicki and credits him with being her audio mentor, as well as Dan Mussleman at Books on Tape for continuing to support her work. When she first started, Card wondered, "Am I just a hobbyist, or do I really want to do this?" When she found herself eagerly awaiting another book to narrate, she knew. Audio was for her.

And no wonder. When Card was growing up, she turned many of her school projects into audiobooks. "If I had a choice between doing an oral report or doing a video or whatever, I always picked audio." Emily's eighth-grade teacher even had her read a short story and record it for all her other classes to listen to. Emily discovered audiobooks through her father, award-winning novelist Orson Scott Card. (Emily had the pleasure of narrating his books ENDER'S GAME and WYRMS .) "He loves them. We go through them on family trips, and he has a whole pile by the door for people to borrow once he's read them. He's always listening to an audiobook, and my mom is my biggest fan. I think she's the only person who's listened to every single thing I've recorded."

She adds, with a laugh, "I feel like I'm an audiobook fan that got to sneak into a booth and start reading. I'm really kind of stunned that I get to do it for a living."

Card's offers that her latest work, as one of the narrators (along with Emma Bering) of the YA novel REVOLUTION by Jennifer Donnelly, was her biggest challenge to date. Producer/director Gabrielle de Cuir notes, "Emily has mastered both the intimacy and the larger storytelling skills of audiobook reading, She's able to portray a very believable contemporary first-person teenager and, in the blink of an eye, shift to loving character sketches of a 60-year-old French historian, a Middle Eastern rap singer, and about a dozen realistic French Revolution characters!"

Card is currently directing Stefan Rudnicki in an audio sci-fi series by Gordon R. Dickson, doing some writing for the screen (she recently directed and starred in the Web video, "Jane Austen's Fight Club"), and finishing her first graphic novel. LADDERTOP, based on a story by her father, will be out this winter. Card enjoys her many roles but admits that she's really a bit of an introvert. "I really like working with just one other person when I'm in the recording booth. I get to just play, and it's really fun."--S.J. Henschel

Emily Janice Card photo by Leslie Paugh