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SOUND TALENT NEWS

Voices to Know

AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators

EARPHONES REPORT OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2023

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.

Carlotta Brentan

From the start of Carlotta Brentan’s narration of SUDDENLY, her third-person storyteller emotionally connects the listener to the narrative’s point of view. Brentan’s quiet storyteller voice, ever so slightly sotto voce, illuminates the dramatic, here-and-now presence beneath the author’s descriptive opening. Her third-person narrator consistently discovers events, rather than details them, as if she knows what’s occurring in advance. Her storyteller activates, rather than presents, the feelings of the novel’s young protagonists. It is this discovery, and her storyteller’s quiet intimacy, that maintains listeners’ connection to events and people that are both agonizing and tormented.

Complete Listing

Ron Butler

Throughout his performance in DEVIL MAKES THREE, Ron Butler’s narration epitomizes multiple performance qualities essential to compelling storytelling, including two that deserve special mention: connecting to the emotional stakes and matching them; and taking his characters seriously, especially those with varying accents. In a story that recounts a country and its people in almost constant turmoil, Butler’s performance consistently connects to and matches that turmoil’s consequence, embedded in the author’s words. And his characters, even those whose accents might arguably lend themselves to less than a three-dimensional rendition, are, as they must be, taken seriously by the storyteller.

Complete Listing

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

Elise Arsenault: MADONNA by Mary Gabriel
Eilidh Beaton: ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A LORD

by Celeste Connally

Tanya Eby: TUESDAY GIRL by Tanya Eby
Kimberly Farr: SEPTEMBER HOUSE by Carissa Orlando
Tavia Gilbert: LOOK AT THE LIGHTS, MY LOVE by Annie Ernaux
Stacy Gonzalez: FULL MOON OVER FREEDOM by Angelina M. Lopez
Daniel Henning: SPEECH TEAM by Tim Murphy
Barrie Kreinik: THE PARIS ASSIGNMENT by Rhys Bowen
Janet Metzger: I DIDN'T STEAL YOUR MERMAID by R. Stim
Aubrey Parsons: BEST SERVED COLD by David J. Gatward
Courtney Patterson: THE KUDZU QUEEN by Mimi Herman
Tim Gerard Reynolds: LIGHT BRINGER by Pierce Brown
Karissa Vacker: CHECK & MATE by Ali Hazelwood
Gabra Zackman: ENDEMIC by Monica Gandhi

Eunice Wong

Eunice Wong leaps from the actor’s high-diving board throughout her narration of LAND OF MILK AND HONEY. Her performance’s degree of difficulty is amplified by locating emotions that often seem irretrievably buried in the syntax of this fictional account of Earth’s distantly-apocalyptic future. What Wong consistently demonstrates is the fact that there is always feeling beneath the author’s words. In that, Wong connects to withheld feelings, connects to the stanching of emotional excess that, nevertheless, cries to emerge from within characters’ desolate lives. It is Wong’s playing against explosive feelings, simmering beneath the text, that so palpably engages the listener.

Complete Listing

Gail Shalan

Go to Gail Shalan’s website, view her headshot, listen to her samples. She is an adult. Yet, ELLIE'S DELI: WISHING ON MATZO BALL SOUP! is Shalan’s first-person accounting of “…adorable 11-year-old Ellie,” according to Audiofile Magazine’s review. What distinguishes this compelling performance is the storyteller’s intuitive understanding that, despite her pitch-perfect, pre-adolescent voice, Ellie does not know she is adorable. Instead, Shalan navigates Ellie’s heartbreak and fears in a way that authentically reveals their incredible meaning and importance to her. As a result, listeners are engaged by an adorable child, worthy of our sympathies.

Complete Listing

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

Mark Bramhall, Caroline Hewitt: BEYOND THE DOOR OF NO RETURN by David Diop
Mark Bramhall, Billie Fulford-Brown: NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason
Sean Patrick Hopkins: HAPPINESS FALLS by Angie Kim
André Santana: OUT THERE SCREAMING by Jordan Peele, John Joseph Adams [Eds.]
Jesse Vilinsky: ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott
Kimberly Wetherell: LEST SHE FORGET by Lisa Malice

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

Gerard Doyle, Dion Graham, Simon Jones, January LaVoy, Arthur Morey, Robin Miles, Soneela Nankani, Suzanne Toren,

Emily Woo Zeller,

AudioFile's Audiobook Talent & Industry Guide features listings from 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 3, 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.