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SOUND TALENT NEWS

Voices to Know

AudioFile’s newest showcase of award-winning narrators



EARPHONES REPORT May-July 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.

Timothy Andrés Pabon

In his narration of THE LAST GREAT DREAM: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties, Timothy Andrés Pabon reinforces the nonfiction storyteller’s charge: surrogate author (AKA, expert/authority) whose project is to concurrently educate and convince the listener that this important chronicle warrants their undivided attention. Pabon’s affecting persona is achieved by speaking as if this story is as important to him (because it is) as to the listener. His narration is imbued with organic emphasis to attract listeners’ attention to what is meant to inform them. The result: subtle, albeit palpable, urgency that advises listeners: Stay tuned.

Erin Bennett

What emerges from within storyteller Erin Bennett during her narration of THE LISTENERS is the third-person narrator’s obligation to this multi-layered mystery’s emotional stakes. While each of this historical fiction’s multitude of WWII American and foreign-accented characters is authentically (accents included) and dimensionally acted, what equally engages the listener is Bennett’s unfailing grip on the non-dialogue narrative’s emotional stakes. She never drops out (disconnects) to recite, even during description. She maintains dramatic tension by properly imbuing each word with emotional consequence. Concurrently braiding her characters’ and non-dialogue narrator’s connection to the stakes creates the here and now; and that makes the story come alive!

Highlights of single-voice narrations getting recent

Earphones Awards:

• Nicky Endres: HOT GIRLS WITH BALLS
• Billie Fulford-Brown: THE SECRETS OF LOVELACE ACADEMY
• Stephen Graybill: THE INVISIBLE SPY
• Kaleo Griffith: SOUTH OF NOWHERE
• Caroline Hewitt: THE FRENCH WINEMAKER’S DAUGHTER
• Elizabeth Knowelden: THE FOUR QUEENS OF CRIME
• Erin Moon: PLEASE PAY ATTENTION
• Elizabeth Wiley: WILD THING
• Machelle Williams: COMBEE
• Eunice Wong: DOWN IN THE SEA OF ANGELS
• Nicol Zanzarella: THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID

Mia Hutchinson-Shaw



First-person narration (through which the entire story is viewed) presents the storyteller with perhaps the actor’s primary challenge: to react as a dimensional, real person (no reacting when performance is voiced or presented, which cuts us off from the character’s heart and soul). In order to react (act), the narrator must first and foremost remain consistently wedded to the subtext (the words’ emotional consequence). Mia Hutchinson-Shaw meets this challenge in droves with her creation of Evie—a quirky, vulnerable, empathetic protagonist—throughout her narration of COME AS YOU ARE. Because she consistently reacts to the emotional vicissitudes that make Evie’s heart and soul tick, so do we.

Will Watt



AMONG GHOSTS, narrated by Will Watt, epitomizes the deeply emotive power of intimately connected storytelling. His narrative voice—a blend of soft volume and fidelity to the words’ feelings—is the aesthetic fit for a medium (small booth and a mike) defined by intimacy. As if the listener is a single person seated across from the storyteller at a small table, Watt metaphorically leans in and mines affecting emotional nuance that (ironically and counterintuitively) would be unachievable with a louder volume that encourages distant, presented (non-acted) feelings. With each breath, Watt’s emotionally connected, “less” voice, rivets the storyteller to that nuance, which, in turn, rivets the listener.

Narrators in ensemble narrations are also garnering Earphones Awards:

• Charlie Albers: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
• Mark Bramhall: THE CORRESPONDENT
• Petrea Burchard: THE CORRESPONDENT
• Chris Andrew Ciulla: THE CORRESPONDENT
• Steven Crossley: KNAVE OF DIAMONDS
• Jeff Ebner: THE CORRESPONDENT
• Cary Hite: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
• Laura Horowitz: IN THE FAMILY WAY
• Zura Johnson: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
• Gilli Messer: IN THE FAMILY WAY
• Erin Moon: ON ISABELLA STREET
• Jane Oppenheimer: THE CORRESPONDENT
• Eve Passeltiner: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
• Maggi-Meg Reed THE CORRESPONDENT
• Jim Seybert: THE CORRESPONDENT
• André Santana: THE GHOSTS OF GWENDOLYN MONTGOMERY
• Gail Shalan: OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
• Greg Tremblay: ALL BETTER NOW
• Jesse Vilinsky: ANY TROPE BUT YOU

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

Edoardo Ballerini, Kimberly Farr, Dion Graham, 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.