Every year, the Audio Publisher's Association presents the Audie Awards for outstanding recorded books. It’s the industry’s “Oscars.” Dozens of judges listen to hundreds of hours of the best of the best producers. The competition is... fierce.
As an editor and producer at Audible Studios, I submit my "best work" two times, once in August and again at the end of the year.
This is an elite group. We don't dare submit anything that is not legendary. If a judge thinks you're messing with them, forget it!
While I fall in love with each title I produce, when I look back at the past year, THESE are the titles that stuck with me. I listen to them more than once, not because of my "job," but because they transported me.
For Best Actors (VO's, we call them) in Audiobooks This Year, from the Bright List, may I suggest:
MULTI-VOICED PERFORMANCE:
The Marines of Montford Point: America’s First Black Marines, by Melton A. MacLauren. Narrated by Adam Lazzare White, JD Jackson, Karole Foreman, William Harper, Daxton Edwards, and David Carpenter.
The Montford Point Marines were the first black Marines unit, much like the Tuskeegee Airmen. Our VOs who voice the American black experience made this one for the history books, that’s for sure, it’s SUPERB.
I’ll tell you how good it is-- we got requests from the Afghanistan FRONT, actual soldiers there, to send them physical copies, and Brilliance is producing them. I’ve sent it to two sons of MP Marines, who told me it brought their entire family together in a way they’d never shared before.
This title, darn it, won't meet the technical criteria for this performing nomination, bc the stories are not read "all in the same room"--- we recorded different VO's, in different settings. But I just have to list it here so you can find it!
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, by Aaron Glantz. Narrated by Brian Sutherland, Julia Farhat,Edoardo Ballerini, Suzanne Toren, Peter Ganim, Stephen Bel Davies, Matthew Dudley,Jonathan Davis, Lameece Issaq, Anthony Haden Salerno, Karen Chilton, Gabra Zackman, Lauren Fortgang, Anthony Bowden,Ira Rosenberg, and David Ledoux.
This collection is a love letter, an homage to our veterans, from Audible studios, it really is. Every performance is fantastic. This is the kind of book that changes people’s lives.
SOLO NARRATION FEMALE:
When Marina Abramovic Dies, by James Westcott. Narrated by Kathleen Gati.
I am listening to this book for the third time, entirely out of my own fascination and enchantment. If there was a Sleeper category, this would win hands down.
James Westcott wrote a contemporary fine art biography that broke every rule, starting with the fact that you can’t put it down. — I’m serious, he’s been criticized among the academic crowd for writing an artist biography that is TOO interesting.
I never would’ve guessed that a starkly visual artist’s narrative would make an outstanding audio script, but Westcott intuitively writes for aural transmission— it you never SAW Abramovic in person, you would still experience her, entirely, in this story. And she is a force of nature
Narrator Kathleen Gati; I want to kiss her feet. What a talent. She inhabits a host of radical and conservative Serbian characters, the Soviet establishment, and then the entire European and New York art world. Mind-blowing.
Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres. Narrated by Elizabeth Evans.
This is the story of children, a daughter in particular, whose Indiana family took them off on a Christian Mission in the Dominican Republic that nearly kills them all, because of their father’s insanity and sadism.
Sound a little familiar? Well, Julia wrote it first, this is the template that blew everyone’s mind and inspired dozens of others.
Elizabeth Evans is one of Audible's newer VO actors, and she is a marvel. As young as she is, she has delivered one of the most mature and riveting performances of the year.
SOLO NARRATION MALE:
Double Life: A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood, by Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine. Narrated by Ethan Sawyer.
As a book, this is for the Broadway crowd, an insider group to be sure. And it is considered a hallmark of gay literature in that it is about the mature relationship of two older gay men—no one writes about this!
But Evan was so, so good. I couldn't *believe* there was only one narrator. He inhabited the two different narrators without resorting to doing voices, and he *sang.* You want to write him a love letter afterward.
NARRATION BY THE AUTHOR
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, by Michael MacDonald. Narrated by the Author
Michael re-lived his life story as he read his memoir—he was reluctant to take the assignment, and I can see why; he is present in every moment, no matter how poignant or raw. He IS Southie.
This was a bestseller and it’s an essential reading of the Irish-American experience, a Boston touchstone to be sure.
Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life, by Jim Kristofic. Narrated by the Author.
Alienated teenager code-switching in the middle of an Indian Boy Scout Troup on the rez? “Fast Times at Navajo High,” you could call it.
We were so lucky to get author Jim Kristofic to read his memoir, because NO ONE could’ve done this unique book except him and his boyhood friends who lived it. He is fantastic, and his Audible editor/producer understood exactly what we were getting here, a real jewel.
A really special book, another one of my candidates for “Diversity To Blow the Audio Mind.”
Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy, by Sanjiv Bhattacharya. Narrated by the author.
A London EastEnder, fresh off the boat with an Esquire magazine press pass, goes to Utah to get up close and personal with Mormon polygamists. They proceed to take him into their homes like he’s the first person they ever felt like talking to.
I’ll never know exactly how Sanjiv charmed or talked the fundamentalists into it, but his narration of his exposé gives you a clue: he is a born natural, a charismatic, a comic, and a raconteur like few others.
Sanjiv has asked me if he could continue working as a VO, and I know it’s because he fell in love with it, he was BORN to do this, truly.
MEMOIR AND BIOGRAPHY:
When Marina Abramovic Dies, by James Westcott. Narrated by Kathleen Gati.
See above.
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, by Paul Krassner. Narrated by David Letwin.
My absolute favorite opening lines— and male-narrator performance of the year.
Authors are often flattered by their narrator’s expertise, but this was special. Paul wrote a special note to us about DL’s performance. He said that his wife and he both cried, numerous times, because David “got every note” even beyond what he thought his writing conveyed.
This was a fateful connection. Letwin and I were both high school underground journalists in the early 70s who worshipped Krassner, the leading radical publisher of our youth, with his magazine, “The Realist.” He was our favorite entry on Nixon’s Enemies List.
Decades later, I discovered that Letwin was an actor and drama professor at Rutgers. Krassner then came back into my life as a visiting author in Santa Cruz. I went to hear him read and suggested we create an audiobook out of his title. “I have the PERFECT actor for you,” I told him. I had just started working at Audible. The timing was extraordinary and so was the result!
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, by Michael MacDonald. Narrated by the Author
See Above.
Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life, by Jim Kristofic. Narrated by the Author.
See above.
NONFICTION:
Jesus Land: A Memoir, by Julia Scheeres. Narrated by Elizabeth Evans.
See above.
Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy, by Sanjiv Bhattacharya. Narrated by the author.
See above.
--Susie Bright
