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Voices to Know

AudioFile's newest showcase of award-winning narrators



EARPHONES REPORT January- April 2025

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.

Susan Ericksen


Multiple accented characters appear in BONDED IN DEATH, including: Eastern European, Irish, and English. Narrator Susan Ericksen eminently meets her storyteller’s primary accent obligation: to perform these characters as people that do not know they have an accent, even though we do. That is, she plays the person, not the accent. What glues Ericksen’s accented characters to dimensionality, keeping them from slipping off into caricature, is her connection to their emotional purpose. Yes, her accents sound authentic, a must. That said, no matter how believable, it is her prioritizing their words’ emotional consequence that convinces us they actually are where they’re from, but more consequentially, binds us to who they are.

Matthew Lloyd Davies


Matthew Lloyd Davies’s narration of THE MESOPOTAMIAN RIDDLE is a paean to the nonfiction storyteller’s task to passionately immerse listeners in the here and now. Davies (the author’s surrogate) viscerally connects listeners to his keen desire to unpack this spellbinding archeological journey. During his narration, we sense both pleasure and immediacy, as if the author is fervently deciphering ancient Mesopotamian enigmas for the first time. Davies’s understated cadence, replete with organically felt nuance, sounds as if he is speaking extemporaneously. The result: We are persuaded to feel the immediacy of his delight. And we are woven into these sublime discovery moments as if they are happening right now.

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

Tim Gerard Reynolds



The bane of the fiction narrator can be description. In his wholly felt narration of DRUMINDOR: Riyria Chronicles, Book 5, Tim Gerard Reynolds’s third-person storyteller maintains his connection to the narrative’s subtext, including the description, which is always imbued with the emotional residue from whatever directly precedes it (every word in fiction is imbued with feeling). Rather than presenting (voicing) even seemingly innocuous description—as if reading an unfelt stage direction—and disconnect from the narrative’s subtext that viscerally tethers listener to story, Reynolds remains connected to the previous moment’s feeling, whether describing a dwarf’s view of the harbor, or a burlap bag filled with peanuts, “skins and all.”

Katie Koster



Katie Koster embodies what is among the storyteller’s most significant first-person commandments: "Lean in" (metaphorically) to intimately connect your character’s feelings with listeners; make listeners feel privy to your character’s journey as if it is meant just for them. From the get-go and throughout her narration of this romantic comedy, A FIVE-LETTER WORD FOR LOVE, listeners might well imagine themselves seated around a small café table, all ears, as their nearest and dearest confesses the ups and downs that are her life. Importantly, Koster consistently maintains this connection to her listeners, as if she is always leaning in to intimately share her travails, ensuring they remain leaned-in as well, eager for more.

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

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

Kimberly Farr, Dion Graham, Hillary Huber. Robin Miles, Suzanne Toren

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 8, 2025

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