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Voices to Know

AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators



EARPHONES REPORT JULY-SEPTEMBER 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.

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

Tavia Gilbert

Imbued in Tavia Gilbert’s narration of CHASING NORTH STAR, from beginning until end, is performance commitment. That is, listeners can feel Gilbert-the-storyteller’s devotion (or, if you will, desire) to speak each of the author’s words as if they are meant to be the most important word in the narrative. As a consequence, listeners, the beneficiary of this commitment, also feel the full revelation of the emotional stakes embedded in this family saga of trauma and mental illness that impacts generations in both Germany and America. It is this actor/narrator’s commitment to the feelings that hover beneath syntax that causes listeners to be electrified by this compelling coming-of-age saga.

Nancy Wu

Fiction’s third-person narrator tells the story from the point of view of the character they are talking about. Nancy Wu expertly replicates that inside-the-head experience as she navigates character and action in AVATAR, THE LAST AIRBENDER: The Legacy of Yangchen. Wu’s consistently lower volume (literally less voice), combined with committed performance energy, and commitment to characters’ feelings, intimately involves the listener in the action and characters’ emotional lives. Wu’s third-person storyteller, in effect, maintains the here-and-now, keeping listeners viscerally connected and feeling as if they are experiencing events happening in real time.

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

• Daniel Henning: FARRELL COVINGTON AND THE LIMITS OF STYLE by Paul Rudnick and GAYS ON BROADWAY by Ethan Mordden
• Jesse Vilinsky: THE ROAD TO ROSWELL by Connie Willis
• Mack Sanderson: THE BATTLE OF INK AND ICE by Darrell Hartman

David Marantz



Understated narration seems counter-intuitive to a story’s high stakes action, yet that is how David Marantz approaches SILENT CAME THE MONSTER. Understated is the only way to believably recount a scary story that features scary shark attacks. The alternative would be to effectively help listeners by vocally pushing, being too big, to somehow ensure that we listeners who require it get the narrator’s help in connecting to the high stakes. Marantz understands that rather than over-the-top, which, oddly, pushes listeners away, an understated approach invites them in to feel and react to the action for themselves, without being spoon fed.

Billie Fulford-Brown



Throughout her narration of THE LAST LIFEBOAT (historical fiction that takes place during Nazi Germany’s bombing of London), narrator Billie Fulford-Brown maintains our keen interest in and connection to these protagonists (and other characters) by committing to the actor’s dialogue job-one: listen and react. Throughout the story we feel the wheels turning inside each character’s head as they listen to and then react to one another. It is the act of listening and reacting that emotionally connects listeners to the story’s characters and creates our own feelings about them. Fulford-Brown’s characters come alive as she listens and reacts!

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

• Joe Arden: THAT SIC LUV by Jescie Hall
• Carlotta Brentan: BEST FRIENDS: Friends, Book 2 by Shannon Hale
• Nicky Endres: THE GRIMOIRE OF GRAVE FATES by Hannah Alkaf, Margaret Owen [Eds.]
• Laura Horowitz, Rachel L. Jacobs, Colin Martin: THE SAY SO by Julia Franks
• Rachel L. Jacobs, Kimberly Farr: THE SPECTACULAR by Fiona Davis
• Gilli Messer, Amber Battaglia, Milly Sanders, Sara Sheckells: THE QUIET TENANT by Clémence Michallon
• Thérèse Plummer, Gabra Zackman, Hillary Huber: WITH A KISS WE DIE by L.R. Dorn
• Aida Reluzco, Raquel Beattie, Carlotta Brentan, Erin deWard, Ella Lynch: ALCHEMY OF A BLACKBIRD by Claire McMillan
• Eunice Wong: I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU YET by Jessie Q. Sutanto

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

Dion Graham, January LaVoy, Robin Miles, Suzanne Toren

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.