Audible Honors Outstanding Voice Performances in New Narrator Hall of Fame

Talented performers take us on powerful, moving journeys. Their ability to capture the emotive music in language enriches and adds meaning to our listening experiences, their voices staying with us long after the performance is done. To recognize the actors whose voices have enthralled us time and time again, Audible launched the Narrator Hall of Fame in 2017.

At the inaugural ceremony held on May 11, 2018 at the Newark Museum, twenty actors were honored--ranging from Alan Cummings, whose audiobook performances span everything from children’s books to Shakespeare, to Bahni Turpin, who has brought important titles like The Hate U Give and The Underground Railroad to life. The narrators were selected for their prolific body of work, exceptional listener reviews, stellar performances and commitment to this distinctive craft.

Prior to heading to the ceremony, the performers and their guests were among the first of the public to see Audible’s new state-of-the-art studios, where honoree Prentice Onayemi was slated to work the next day – one of more than 20,000 actors who have recorded for Audible in the Newark studios and elsewhere in the past five years.

“It’s such a privilege to get to do what we do,” Scott Brick, an honoree who has performed over 850 audiobooks, said. “I tell new narrators all the time to suck the marrow out of the bones of this experience because you’ll never have more fun in a studio than doing this work.”

Robin Miles agreed, citing Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State as the favorite book she’s performed. “It’s one of her fiction books that people don’t know very well, but it was absolutely devastating. I think I gave my best acting performance in that book.”

When asked the advice that Brick would give his younger self, narrating for the first time back in 1999, he said, “Talk faster. Because I don’t think I’m going to be happy till I narrate every book ever written.”