“Falling into a story” has always been important to Dion Graham, and he’s particularly pleased be able to tell the stories he reads for audiobooks. Dion spoke to us between rehearsals for the Off-Broadway production “A Hard Heart” and filming for “The Wire,” one of the TV serials where he often gets a slot. “I like to be open to hearing the author’s voice, and I try to respond and channel what I hear.” Recently he took listeners into the story of Dave Eggers’s WHAT IS THE WHAT. The novel, based on actual experiences of Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, was drawn from long conversations with Valentino. Dion also worked closely with Valentino, initially to assure pronunciation, but through the association, he had the unusual opportunity to learn even more than Eggers had committed to the page. “I always try to not just bring the characters to life but to communicate the whole story.” Dion takes a special interest in African dialects and has had occasion to use some Xhosa, the tonal “click” dialect. WHAT IS THE WHAT demonstrates this understanding and allowed him to expand his repertoire and was recently celebrated among the Best Audiobooks of 2007. He was invited to read from the book when Eggers was celebrated at the PEN World Voices event in April 2006.

In many of Dion’s audios, his African-American voices reflect a character’s age or class or a point in history with careful clarity and believability. Dion has particularly enjoyed giving voice to David Fulmer’s Creole detective with a Sicilian heritage, Valentin St. Cyr, from CHASING THE DEVIL’S TAIL and RAMPART STREET. “Those New Orleans dialects are a rich gumbo!” says Dion. The audiobook of RAMPART STREET won the 2007 Ben Franklin Award. Dion has recorded more than 20 titles for Recorded Books’ Griot Audio, including BOMBINGHAM, WEST OF REHOBOTH, and STANDING AT THE SCRATCH LINE. In Pete Dexter’s TRAIN and Caryl Phillips’s DANCING IN THE DARK, Dion’s voices capture both culture and history and keep listeners connected to the books’ characters, whether they inhabit the 1950s Civil Rights era, South Africa, or the world of vaudeville at the turn of the last century. “When I get into other people’s skin, as the character,” Dion notes, “it’s a good way to connect across different experiences.”

Dion Graham