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SOUND TALENT NEWS

Voices to Know

AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators

EARPHONES R EPORT JULY-SEPTEMBER 2024

Find the narrators who are getting the best reviews and coveted Earphones Awards.

AudioFile's updated Talent Guide gives expanded details on the audiobook experience and accomplishments of hundreds of narrators—includes contact information and pseudonyms.

Link directly to reviews and complete profiles of narrators creating exceptional audio.

Hillary Huber

Throughout her narration of YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME, Hillary Huber exploits a wide range of her formidable storytelling aptitudes, including intuiting the syntax’s directive to get deeper “inside the head” of both first- and third-person POV. In this way, Huber creates intimate nuance by dropping her volume just a bit, and then, ever so slightly breathily, takes the listener (as if holding tightly on to their hand) through the maze of her character’s inner thoughts and feelings. It is the flexing of this storyteller’s muscle that—when the syntax requests it (as it does in virtually all fiction)—compellingly connects listeners to a character’s most intimate thoughts.

Complete Listing

Robert Fass

“Connected observer” is an apt characterization for this richly captivating narration of PARADISE BRONX: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough by Robert Fass. A close listen imagines Fass as a passenger in your car, gazing out his window and connecting the various feelings about what he sees to you. In that sense, rather than merely reporting or disconnectedly voicing information (AI already has that down), Fass, as the AudioFile reviewer rightly observes, “thoughtfully” and, most importantly, organically takes on the persona of engaged reporter who is delighted to take us, arm around our shoulder, on an emotionally nuanced journey through “Bronxland.”

Complete Listing

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

Matthew Lloyd Davies: BASIL & DAHLIA
Christina Delaine: CLAY AND BONES
Matt Godfrey : THE KNOCKOUT ARTIST
Daniel Henning: SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA
Elizabeth Knowelden: THE ORNITHOLOGIST'S FIELD GUIDE TO LOVE
Rebecca Lowman: SLOW DANCE
Jorjeana Marie: THE LOST STORY
Penelope Rawlins: THE ARSENIC EATER'S WIFE
Christine Rendel : SIPSWORTH
Ann Richardson : THE OYSTER DIVER'S SECRET
Jonathan Todd Ross: JUST THE GOOD STUFF
Kimberly M. Wetherell: LOOKING FOR A SIGN
Gabra Zackman: CUE THE SUN
Nicol Zanzarella: THE UNDERMINING OF TWYLA AND FRANK

Peter Noble

There is a fine performance-line within a nonfiction narrator’s effort to dramatize a particularly compelling real-life story. One side of the line is “helping” the words: vocally emphasizing them, pushing them, without internalizing their dramatic import—effectively treating listeners as if they will not “get it” without the narrator’s help. On the other side is Peter Noble, whose narration of PARIS '44: The Shame and the Glory is both measured (vocally held back), and wholly felt, by way of the storyteller’s internalized commitment to unpacking the traumatic German occupation of Paris during WWII. It is this commitment, not just Noble’s voice, that commands listeners’ attention.

Complete Listing

Elena Rey

Despite various characters’ sometimes hyperbolic language and super-charged (arguably over-the-top) responses to all manner of emotional vicissitudes, what engages listeners throughout OYE, narrated by Elena Rey, is this storyteller’s devotion to taking their characters seriously. Rey intuitively recognizes that the characters would never regard themselves as anything other than real people that really are, at times, extremely frustrated, angry, upset, etc. Because Rey takes the characters as seriously as the characters themselves do, Rey does not vocally “indicate” feelings. Rather, Rey permits their connection to the subtext (the story’s feelings) to direct their performance. Thus, we buy into and are moved by however Rey’s characters truthfully respond to trauma

Complete Listing

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

Barrie Kreinik: THE INCORRIGIBLES
Nicky Endres: TOWARD ETERNITY
Kimberly Farr: THE CLIFFS
Jim Seybert: THE HISTORY OF SOUND
Caroline Hewitt: HUSBANDS AND LOVERS
Rebecca Lowman: THE RETUN OF ELLIE BLACK & THE HISTORY OF SOUND
Jim Meskimen: DANGEROUS VISIONS
Lee Osorio: THE SONS OF EL REY
Aida Reluzco: FATAL INTRUSION
André Santana : THE SONS OF EL REY & FATAL INTRUSION
Mara Wilson: DANGEROUS VISIONS

And naturally, AudioFile's GOLDEN VOICE narrators rack up their share of Earphones Awards:

Edoardo Ballerini, Dion Graham, Johnny Heller, Simon Vance

Sign up now for AudioFile's Audiobook Talent & Industry Guide include your listings with the best narrators in the industry. Audiobook skills and experience are foremost in this focused resource for audiobook voices.

Thanks to audiobook director Paul Alan Ruben for his contributions to Voices to Know.

Voices to Know Vol 6, 2024

The indispensable tool for audiobook professionals, librarians, and anyone wanting a comprehensive resource for the audiobook industry. Casting directors, producers, and publishers can search by name, specific vocal skills and dialects, listen to clips and find linked reviews of recent audiobook work.