Audiobook narration is the fourth or fifth career for Britisher Wanda McCaddon, who has also been a newspaper reporter, university professor and stage, film and TV actress before beginning to narrate audiobooks 15 years ago. Wanda started her narrating career with The Mind's Eye dramatizations, working on THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Five hundred titles later, she has recorded for Books on Tape, Blackstone, Audio Editions, Dual Dolphin and Durkin Hayes. Wanda is also a woman of many names. She records as Nadia May, Donada Peters, Margaret McKay, Ann Miles and Leonarda Stafford. Her favorite recordings are Colleen McCullough's Roman novels, Beryl Markham's African biographies and "everything" by E.M. Forster. Wanda is also the co-founder of a theater company, TheatreFirst, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she moves to the live stage from time to time. As a partner with David Case and Craig Black in Big Ben Audio, Wanda has a chance to select books she wants to record, abridge them "lightly," and see the whole process through. Like most narrators she has a wish list of titles she'd like to record. Hers includes recent fiction by British women writers, such as Doris Lessing, Barbara Pym or Muriel Stark.--December 1997

December 2007 Update

Chalked up a great success with WHAT WAS SHE THINKING? by Zoë Heller--the book upon which the film Notes on a Scandal was based.

December 2006 Update

Elizabeth George's latest, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER, offered Wanda the enjoyable challenge of dialogue peppered with the patois of Cockney-Caribbean speech. Historical settings were on the agenda this year, too, with Karleen Koen's DARK ANGELS and THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. The recent interest in Marie Antoinette brought a re-release of Wanda's recording of Antonia Fraser's biography. And she did literary classics, too: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and HOWARD'S END. Stage performances in San Francisco made this a busy year.

December 2005 Update
Wanda says she's had some narrating "plums" this year: Elizabeth George's latest, WITH NO ONE AS WITNESS, which earned Wanda her fourteenth Earphones Award, as well as three Barbara W. Tuchman histories: THE PROUD TOWER (Europe from 1890 to 1914), the Pulitzer Prize winning THE GUNS OF AUGUST (about WWI), and A DISTANT MIRROR (concerning the calamitous fourteenth century).

December 2002 Update
[aka Donada Peters and Nadia May] Wanda learned a "sobering lesson in realpolitik" with the narration of TALIBAN by Ahmed Rashid. The reading demanded her expertise in Arabic, Pashto, and Dari pronunciations. This year Wanda also revisited old favorites with new recordings of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, EMMA, and WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

December 2001 Update
Wanda's stage role in a long running production of an Irish tragedy, BY THE BOG OF CATS, helped her polish up her Irish accent. All the Dublin accents were put to use in Brendan O'Carroll's THE GRANNY, which picked up an Earphones Award. Wanda recorded several biographies this year, including SIMONE WEIL from the Penguin Lives series and GEORGE ELIOT. In PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE, a fascinating study of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, Wanda and David Case shared this memorable narration. Wanda also completed Colleen McCullough's THE THORN BIRDS, giving listeners a fine opportunity to revisit the 1977 novel. Continuing her superb performances of Elizabeth George's mysteries, Wanda completed A TRAITOR TO MEMORY, recording as Donada Peters.

December 2000 Update
Since we caught up with Wanda a year ago, she has recorded 40 audiobooks, most for Books on Tape, as Donada Peters, and for Blackstone, as Nadia May. These include some biographies--notably works on Rudolf Nureyev, Rebecca West, and James Joyce, and titles set in Asia and India, locales for which Wanda has a special talent. In addition, Houghton Mifflin, new to audiobooks, sought her out to record two titles by Penelope Fitzgerald, THE BLUE FLOWER, and her new, posthumous collection of stories, MEANS OF ESCAPE. Also among Wanda's favorites are a long series of Ngaio Marsh mysteries; an unusual collection of short stories by Martha Grimes, THE TRAIN NOW DEPARTING; and THE DRESS LODGER, an unlikely bestseller about plague and prostitution in Victorian England. There's no chance of being typecast with all these roles! Wanda also appeared in two stage plays in San Francisco.

December 1999 Update
We follow Wanda's many performances as Nadia May (Blackstone) and Donada Peters (Books on Tape) closely. THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS is just one example of her exceptional talents. Check any of the Elizabeth George series--the newest: IN PURSUIT OF THE PROPER SINNER.

December 1998 Update
Wanda notes that the 39 audiobooks she's completed this year have challenged her international language skills. Recording under the "noms de voix" Donada Peters and Nadia May, she completed three novels of the Far East, including her acclaimed reading of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, and the soon to be released RAJ by Gita Mehta and KALIMANTAN by C.S. Godshalk. This last required a Malay dictionary and research into the Dyak people of Borneo, as well as several calls to the Dutch embassy, for Wanda to be satisfied with her pronunciations. Wanda's special gift is to use accents carefully and skillfully to build layers of authenticity according to the needs of the story.

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All Golden Voices Narrators