Our friends at AudioFile Magazine highlight the Audie Awards gala and winners. Enjoy!
|
|
| All photos: Max Flatow | |
The 2019 Audie Awards Gala, hosted by Tan France, Queer Eye fashion expert, dazzled a capacity crowd of publishers, authors, and audiobook narrators last week. Sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association, the event celebrated the best audiobooks of 2018 in 24 categories, including Audiobook of the Year, which was chosen by a judging panel consisting of Ron Charles, book critic for the Washington Post; Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour; and Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation. The award, recognizing a title that, through quality and influence, stands as a benchmark of excellence for the audiobook industry, went to Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone, narrated by Bahni Turpin and published by Macmillan Audio.
Ron Charles's praise of Turpin's narration highlights the appeal of the audiobook format. He said, "There's something magical about the timbre of Turpin's voice that's perfectly tuned to the fantastical nature of this novel. I felt transported into the world of Children of Blood and Bone. Turpin's superb accents allow us to visualize each character distinctly. Her dramatic pacing builds suspense and then explodes in moments of crisis. When she cries out in agony or despair, I pretty much stopped breathing. This is world-building entirely through the spoken word and the audiobook succeeds on the power of Turpin's dramatic performance."
|
|
| Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini | |
Among other winners, narrators Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini were honored in the Best Female and Best Male narrator categories. Whelan won for her performance of Tara Westover's Educated (Penguin Random House Audio), which also won in the Best Autobiography/Memoir category. Ballerini took the honor with Dean Koontz's Watchers (Brilliance Publishing), a title that also might have contended in the Thriller category, but the Thriller/Suspense Audie went to Crimson Lake by Candace Fox and narrated by Euan Morton (Macmillan Audio). In the Mystery category, the winner was Elizabeth George's The Punishment She Deserves (Penguin Random House Audio), narrated by multiple Audie winner Simon Vance.
British narrators and producers were brought into the limelight with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase by Eoin Colfer and Douglas Adams (Penguin Random House UK Audio), which took the Science Fiction Audie. The Hitchhiker's series--Tertiary, Quandary, and Quintessential Phases--were all Audie winners in 2006 and 2007. Should the collaborators go for Heptagonal?
British publisher Big Finish Productions took home the Audie for Audio Drama with The Martian Invasion of Earth by H.G. Wells, dramatized by Nicholas Briggs. U.K. productions from Audible Studios took the Faith-Based Fiction & Non-Fiction Audie with The Man on the Mountaintop by Susan Trott as well as the win in Literary Fiction for Bleak House by Charles Dickens, narrated by Miriam Margolyes. The Perfectionists, written and narrated by Simon Winchester (HarperAudio), won the Non-Fiction Audie. English author Lucy Strange won the Narration by Author category with The Secret of Nightingale Wood (Scholastic Audio). The Fiction category was captured by Australian author Heather Morris and British narrator Richard Armitage for The Tattooist of Auschwitz (HarperAudio).
Odyssey Award winner Sadie by Courtney Summers, performed by a full cast, led the young people's categories, taking the Young Adult Audie. Jason Reynolds's Sunny, narrated by Guy Lockard (Simon & Schuster Audio), took home the Middle Grade Audie, and Live Oak Media's multi-voice performance of Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome was the Young Listeners winner.