Kirkus - Find your next great audiobook
Search
    by Title by Author by Narrator by Subject

    A microphone and headphones - Talent and Industry Guide

      New Guide Listing  

    Renew Guide Listing

    Details on listings here
    Questions? Contact the Guide Manager


    Voices to Know Newsletter here

    Newsletter

    View as Webpage
     

    SOUND TALENT NEWS


    Voices to Know

    AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators

    

    EARPHONES REPORT JULY-SEPTEMBER 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.

    Hillary Huber


    Throughout her narration of YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME, Hillary Huber exploits a wide range of her formidable storytelling aptitudes, including intuiting the syntax’s directive to get deeper “inside the head” of both first- and third-person POV. In this way, Huber creates intimate nuance by dropping her volume just a bit, and then, ever so slightly breathily, takes the listener (as if holding tightly on to their hand) through the maze of her character’s inner thoughts and feelings. It is the flexing of this storyteller’s muscle that—when the syntax requests it (as it does in virtually all fiction)—compellingly connects listeners to a character’s most intimate thoughts.
    Complete Listing

    Robert Fass


    “Connected observer” is an apt characterization for this richly captivating narration of PARADISE BRONX: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough by Robert Fass. A close listen imagines Fass as a passenger in your car, gazing out his window and connecting the various feelings about what he sees to you. In that sense, rather than merely reporting or disconnectedly voicing information (AI already has that down), Fass, as the AudioFile reviewer rightly observes, “thoughtfully” and, most importantly, organically takes on the persona of engaged reporter who is delighted to take us, arm around our shoulder, on an emotionally nuanced journey through “Bronxland.”
    Complete Listing

    Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

    Earphones Awards:

    Peter Noble

    

    There is a fine performance-line within a nonfiction narrator’s effort to dramatize a particularly compelling real-life story. One side of the line is “helping” the words: vocally emphasizing them, pushing them, without internalizing their dramatic import—effectively treating listeners as if they will not “get it” without the narrator’s help. On the other side is Peter Noble, whose narration of PARIS '44: The Shame and the Glory is both measured (vocally held back), and wholly felt, by way of the storyteller’s internalized commitment to unpacking the traumatic German occupation of Paris during WWII. It is this commitment, not just Noble’s voice, that commands listeners’ attention.  
    Complete Listing

    Elena Rey

    

    Despite various characters’ sometimes hyperbolic language and super-charged (arguably over-the-top) responses to all manner of emotional vicissitudes, what engages listeners throughout OYE, narrated by Elena Rey, is this storyteller’s devotion to taking their characters seriously. Rey intuitively recognizes that the characters would never regard themselves as anything other than real people that really are, at times, extremely frustrated, angry, upset, etc. Because Rey takes the characters as seriously as the characters themselves do, Rey does not vocally “indicate” feelings. Rather, Rey permits their connection to the subtext (the story’s feelings) to direct their performance. Thus, we buy into and are moved by however Rey’s characters truthfully respond to trauma
    Complete Listing

    Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:


     

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

    Edoardo Ballerini, Dion Graham, Johnny Heller, Simon Vance

    Sign up now for AudioFile's Audiobook Talent & Industry Guide include your listings with 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 6, 2024
    Facebook      X      Instagram      YouTube

    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. 

    Search

    by Name
    by Narrators
    by Publishers
    by Services

    •  

    •  

    Featured Narrators

    “Caroline Caroline Hewitt
    “Rob Rob Shapiro
    “Elizabeth Elizabeth Knowelden
    “Gabra Gabra Zackman
    “Elisabeth Elisabeth Rodgers
    “Ella Ella Lynch

    Listing

    © Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
    kirkus logo

    We're now Kirkus Audiobook Reviews!

    You can continue enjoying all of our audiobook reviews right here while we prepare our new home on KirkusReviews.com

    In the meantime, visit Kirkus Reviews for the latest book reviews, author news, and more.

    ×

    Thank you for signing up.

    ×

    Thanks!

    Thank you for contacting us!

    Our group will review and follow up within 72 hours.
    Thanks for your interest!

    Back Home ×

    Thanks!

    Thank you for signing up!

    Our group will review and follow up soon.

    Back Home ×