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SOUND TALENT NEWS

Voices to Know

AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators

EARPHONES R EPORT JANUARY-MARCH 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.

Aven Shore

Aven Shore simultaneously accomplishes two important performance objectives during her narration of FRONTIER: She connects to the emotional stakes (happy, sad, angry, etc.) during a given moment; and she always "sets" (and maintains) the story’s overall emotional consequence. From each chapter’s first word until its last, Shore’s muted voice and intonation reflects each chapter’s overall feeling from the get-go, as if from fifty thousand feet. Thus, listeners are immediately engaged by the narrative’s initial, defining mood (its emotional Zeitgeist). From there, Shore continually intuits a given scene’s various ups and downs. This braiding of maintaining the overall emotional mood along with each moment’s nuanced feeling ensures listeners’ engagement from beginning until end.

Complete Listing

André Santana

Like all nonfiction, GAME OF FREEDOM has an "ax to grind" that essentially says, hey, this is important and what I have to say is worth your while! Narrator André Santana, as nonfiction storytellers must, intuits the author’s need to educate and persuade. His narration subtly, albeit, organically, creates a sense of urgency. And so, as the facts unfold, we find that Santana does not report them, as if detached from their significance. Rather, he imbues the narrative with the author’s sense of urgency. In so doing, listeners simultaneously understand the words and are moved by their emotional message: capoeira (his subject) is as important to us as to the author.

Complete Listing

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

Sophie Amoss: BRING ME YOUR MIDNIGHT by Rachel Griffin
Carlotta Brentan: THE MORNINGSIDE by Téa Obreht
Ferdelle Capistrano: THE SPIRIT GLASS by Roshani Chokshi
Erin deWard: PASSAGE by Connie Willis
Robert Fass: ABOVE THE FIRE by Michael O'Donnell
Janet Metzger: I LIKE YOUR SHOES by R. Stim
Erin Tripp: BERRY SONG by Michaela Goade
Eunice Wong: WHERE THE WATER TAKES US by Alan Barillaro

Lee Osorio

The AudioFile review of THE BULLET SWALLOWER rightly notes that the storyteller’s “…deep voice with a hint of gravel is well suited…” to the novel. Indeed, the vocal instrument narrator Lee Osorio possesses matches the story’s rough and adventurous tenor. One can easily see why he was cast. That said, Osorio’s most important performance contribution is that he, in effect, doesn’t know he possesses such a compelling voice. And so, rather than employ that voice to "act," and thereby affect a presented, insincere rendition, he focuses on connecting to the subtext, taking his characters seriously and simply letting his voice do what it’s designed to do: make sound.

Complete Listing

Marni Penning

Audie 2024 Finalist Marni Penning accomplishes so much during her telling of JOHANNA PORTER IS NOT SORRY—everything narrators must do to create a compelling performance, including taking her characters seriously! (Easier said than done for some). The result: We believe they are real, dimensional; we can relate to them. A close listen reveals a first-person narration that doesn’t sound recited, or read, but rather, eminently real-life. Her protagonist’s feelings (like all her characters) are discovered, moment-by-moment, as they’re encountered. Penning’s characters react to those feelings, often thinking them though. In this way listeners become attached to, even root for, all the characters, whether we like them or not.

Complete Listing

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

Hannah Curtis, Christine Rendel: ANNA O by Matthew Blake
Kathy Bell Denton, Cary Hite: OLD CRIMES by Jill McCorkle
Rose Dioro: SERPENTINE VALENTINE by Giana Darling
Caroline Hewitt: BEYOND CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS by Eliza Knight, Denny S. Bryce
Curtis Michael Holland: WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange
Thérèse Plummer: BRIDE by Ali Hazelwood
Megan Tusing, Samantha Desz: WHERE YOU END by Abbott Kahler
Megan Tusing, Melissa Redmond, Byron Wagner, Stacy Gonzalez, Xe Sands, Fred Sanders, Sara Morsey, Robert Fass: KILL SHOW by Daniel Sweren-Becker
Jesse Vilinsky: CALIFORNIA BEAR by Duane Swierczynski
Jesse Vilinsky, Sharon Freedman: WE MUST NOT THINK OF OURSELVES by Lauren Grodstein
Karissa Vacker, Hillary Huber: WHAT WILD WOMEN DO by Karma Brown

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

Edoardo Ballerini, Dion Graham, Simon Jones, January LaVoy, Robin Miles, Soneela Nankani

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 4, 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.