Actor Christine Baranski and New York Times theater critic Jesse Green join host Jo Reed in a special bonus edition of Behind the Mic. The two teamed up to create the audiobook of Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers, written by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green.

Mary Rodgers was the daughter of the composer Richard Rodgers and was a musical theater composer herself, as well as an author, philanthropist, and mother of six children. She was a funny, honest, and self-effacing woman who knew everyone in American musical theater and worked with quite a few. American musical theater in its golden age was her orbit, and her life begged for a memoir. Thankfully, she wrote one in collaboration with Jesse Green, who completed it after her death in 2014. As much a portrait of a smart and talented woman trying to carve out a creative life for herself as it is an insider’s look at musical theater in the mid-twentieth century, the book is a tour-de-force. The audiobook is brought to life by the award-winning actor Christine Baranski in what amounts to a terrific one-woman show, while Jesse Green himself narrates the footnotes. Listen in as Jo Reed interviews Christine and Jesse about crafting this lively audiobook.

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From the conversation: 

Jo Reed: Christine, I wonder, what was your first thought when you were offered this audiobook to record?

Jesse Green: Offered? She was begged!

Christine Baranski: I thought that it would be a great privilege, and I thought I would wind up spending time with the most extraordinary people through Mary and her memories of all these extraordinary people—that I would then be in Mary’s living room, like Jesse, and there she was with Daddy and then with Mummy and with Steve and with Lenny and, you know, it’s a just a dream, as Jesse said. She just literally had the most intimate relationships with the most extraordinary talents. So I loved it because in addition to reading Mary’s book about four times, I was reading the Richard Rodgers biography and reading about Rodgers and Hammerstein, and I just got to spend time with all these geniuses.

JF: When you hear it as an audiobook, it’s like a one-woman show.

CB: It is. That was the challenge of it, because it’s written in the first person, although you want it to be as conversational as possible, nobody speaks that long. I said to Jesse, “I’m going to pretend I’m sitting across from you and I’m just talking.” But, you know, for 400 and some pages, that’s where your challenge is.

JR: Well, Jesse, as you wrote the book in Mary’s voice—were you thinking of a one-woman show? Were you thinking about it theatrically?

JG: When I was taking all of my hundreds of pages of notes and trying to figure out how to structure the book, one of the things that I knew from the beginning was that it had to be dominated by Mary’s voice, which I knew intimately by that point, that that’s what I wanted readers to hear, and that’s oddly enough what she wasn’t able to produce herself when she tried to write parts of the book before I came onto it. And so, in a way, I thought I was writing a radio drama or something like that. And which is why it makes wonderful sense that it becomes an audiobook finally, but also, I was treating her as, as she and I had discussed, as a character in a drama who happened to have this real life that she lived, but to write her, give her stories a shape that would be dramatic and that would sustain you over the course of a very long, very detailed, very eventful life. And so, what Christine is talking about was she had to then take what was essentially a kind of drama and pull it apart, I imagine, in the way she would a role that she was taking on for live theater.

JR: Christine, you’re taking us through hundreds of pages in the voice of Mary Rodgers. What was the process of getting to the heart of her for finding that voice?

CB: I think the wonderful thing about her, her voice and her character, was she was very direct about life, and she narrated or wrote this book at a time in her life where she wasn’t going to pull any punches. And she didn’t strike me as someone who was sentimental ever in her life. There’s something very matter of fact and dry and, as you said, a really risqué sense of humor. I mean, I wish I had a voice that was at least an octave lower so I could do that. But I realize that if I attempted to affect that kind of deep Bacall-type voice, that smoker’s voice, let’s say—

JG: Mm-hmm.

CB: I didn’t want it to be an affect; it had to be coming naturally over the course of all those hundreds of pages, I had to just be speaking. But, you know, I just spent time over every chapter, sure. And I thought, okay, what is the essence? This is Mary’s girlhood. This is her marriage. This is the loss of her son. Some of that stuff is very emotional. And yet, I don’t want to say she’s not an emotional person, but she is very, very direct, she’s not one to be emotionally indulgent.

JG: It’s interesting. It’s almost as if she had learned the Acting 101 lesson of, you know, don’t play the subtext.

CB: Yeah, let other people cry. Don’t you cry. I had to put that chapter down several times when I read about the death of her son. I put the book down. I couldn’t keep reading it. Today, I actually looked at it again in anticipation of this interview, and was just paging through the chapters reminding myself. And I came to that chapter and I once again, I put it down. It’s just so harrowing but it’s, when you narrate it, and the way it’s written, there are no violins playing. It is what it is. And I think that’s the strength of it. That’s the strength of her personality. She just lived through a great deal and she just kept going and not commenting on her feelings, just get on with it. Stop feeling, just do. There’s something to that effect in the book.

JR: There’s no self pity.

CB: No.

JR: The chapter of her son’s death is harrowing. And with a book that everyone describes rightly as, oh this is so much fun, you’re going to have a blast! There are moments that really are painful, none more so than the death of her son. And that’s a real tonal shift in the book, as it should be. And as you said, Christine, it was difficult to narrate.

CB: Well, because she wouldn’t have broken down and cried. You’d think, “Oh, an actress gets to do a chapter where, you know, she lives through it.” And I had to keep reminding myself, “No, you can’t. You have to be Mary. You can’t be Christine.” Because I just sobbed my way through the book.

JG: Well, Mary had learned a lesson early in life. I mean, I’m not sure that this wonderful quality of hers, you know, came from such a happy source.

JR: No.

JG: One of the reasons she was so unsentimental and did not cry, even in telling that story, she absolutely remained dry when she told it to me, is because she felt that she could not cry in front of her mother, that it made her too vulnerable to her mother’s aggression. And there’s a lot of stories about that in the book, and as a result, she told me, she never cries at sad things, and I never did see her cry at anything sad. She only would cry at happy things, particularly, she said, and I loved this, when people unexpectedly did something very kind. Now, that speaks in part to the rarity of that having happened in her life, particularly her childhood. But it’s also kind of a wonderful philosophy to be more moved by happy things, good things, people behaving well, than the opposite.

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Be sure to follow our Behind the Mic podcast on your favorite podcast platform for more audiobook recommendations and conversations with authors and narrators.

Christine Baranski photo courtesy of the publisher. Jesse Green photo by Earl Wilson.

Kevin R. Free joined Behind the Mic host Jo Reed for a conversation about his acting career, his impressive audiobook work, and being named a 2023 Golden Voice narrator. Kevin is a multiple Earphones Award winner for a wide range of audiobooks, from children’s stories to literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and fantastic science fiction. There are few narrators who can match his versatility and perceptive performances across genres, and no one brings more infectious energy and joy to books for young listeners.

Kevin has had an extraordinary career, both in the recording booth and in theater as an actor, a director, a playwright, and an artistic director. He’s recorded 450 audiobooks, including Martha Wells’s wildly popular Murderbot Diaries series, Brandon Taylor’s insightful works, and many memorable children’s audiobooks.

Listen in to Kevin and Jo’s lively conversation to learn more about how he brings joy into the recording booth, the thought and care he puts into creating voices for every character, and more.

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From the conversation: 

Jo Reed: What is it that you have to bring to narrating children’s books that other books might not require?

Kevin R. Free: Well, with everything I do, I try find the joy in what I’m doing, even if it’s a very serious book. But with children’s books, it’s joy, front and center. The thing that I say in general about audiobooks, when people ask me, “What is the most important thing you think about?” And I say, “Well, like Celine Dion, I feel like I have to embody the character of the book as I’m doing it.” And I say that because Celine Dion once very famously said that she just sort of embodies the character of a song, and that’s how she is able to sing songs, and I thought that that was both brilliant and hilarious. And so now I say, “Like Celine Dion, I like to embody the character of a book.” And with children’s books, even if they’re books that are teaching a lesson about loneliness or grief, there is joy to them. There’s such joy in the illustrations. And when the young people are listening to the book, unless they’re listening to it in a class, they can’t see the illustrations. So, I try to paint a picture with my voice, and use as much joy as possible as I’m doing that.

JR: Well, your range is astounding. There’s just no question about that.

KRF: Thank you.

JR: We see it in all your work. How do you think your theater training has helped you with audiobook narration?

KRF: My theater training has been instrumental in my audiobook career. And I will say that it’s not just the things that I did in school. It is the experiences I’ve had with my colleagues: my other directors, other actors, other writers. I performed with a wildly prolific group of artists called the Neo-Futurists, where we were writing and performing and directing all of our own very short plays, and we’re all very opinionated people, and we have very strong points of view about the work that we’re creating. And so, for me, that theatrical training helped me to first not be precious about the work, as an audiobook narrator, and being really good with directors who are helping me with my interpretation of the books; and also just being able to look at a book, and read the book, and know what the point of view of the book is, and again, embody what the book is about. Because more important to me than the characters is what the narrator’s voice in the book is. Are they sardonic? Are they hilarious, or do they think they’re hilarious? Are they nerdy? What is the narrator’s point of view? That is really important to me when I do an audiobook. And I think theater taught me that.

JR: You’ve done the Murderbot series, by Martha Wells. You’ve done all three of Brandon Taylor’s books, including the very recent THE LATE AMERICANS. I do want to talk about each of those books in turn, but I wonder, if the author is living, do you try to connect with her or him before you begin to narrate?

KRF: I do. I do. There are a few publishers who require it. Back in the days when I was on Twitter, Martha Wells and I had a really great relationship on Twitter, but we also e-mail each other. When I read a new book, because she’s so good with creating names, I e-mail her a list of names, and say, “How do you pronounce these? I think it’s this.” I remember one of my first questions to Martha Wells was, “What are Murderbot’s pronouns?” And Martha Wells wrote back, emphatically, “Its pronoun is ‘it,’ and it was so emphatic that I thought, “Ah, this is great, that this Murderbot knows itself.” And I start from there, with Murderbot. With Brandon Taylor, the brilliant Brandon Taylor, we have had robust, again, Twitter conversations, and most recently on Instagram, when I was asking about some pronunciations there. But I remember, as we were reading REAL LIFE, I didn’t have any relationship with Brandon, and as the director, Maureen Monterubio, and I were recording the book, I remember thinking, “I hope he’s okay.” Because I wasn’t sure if the book was autobiographical, but I thought, “Gosh, I hope Brandon Taylor is okay.” Just, the books are so moving, and they put you through so many changes.

JR: They certainly do, and I want to talk about his books in a second. I want to go back to Murderbot, because I’m very curious. When you first got the pages for the first Murderbot book, what went through your mind when you realized you were a robot, who was the narrator of this book?

KRF: Well, I knew Murderbot was a robot because, when Recorded Books reached out, a producer there named Andy Paris reached out and said, “Hey, would you like to play a robot?” And I wrote back, “Sure. Send me the text and we’ll talk about it.” And I started reading it, and I wasn’t sure I was reading a robot’s words, but I was so taken with the idea that this entity just wanted to be left alone. It’s called a Murderbot, and I’m trying not to do spoilers, but watching and reading Murderbot trying to clear its name, and also, at the same time, Murderbot just wanting to be left alone. I was taken with the personality there, and being a part of a story where an entity whose pronoun is “it” becoming more human, or discovering that it has feelings that it doesn’t want to have. It was very exciting to me.

JR: So Murderbot has evolved over these books. And you need to convey that, but it’s still Murderbot, and that takes a lot of subtlety to be able to do that.

KRF: Thank you for saying that. Subtlety has never been my strong suit. So, if you think it’s subtle, then I’m going to say, that is what I was trying to do, and I’m glad that it’s subtle. When I realized that these Murderbot books are coming-of-age stories for Murderbot, that was when I was able to really clue in to some of that subtlety, some of the places where it becomes more human, and starts to accept its more organic parts of itself. I think that’s my best description of the book, and one of the thoughts that I hold in my head, is that Murderbot is coming of age and becoming more itself, in the same way that we all are constantly becoming ourselves. I’m glad that it’s coming through.

JR: Is it a challenge to narrate the action sequences?

KRF: Those are so exciting! Yes, it’s always a challenge, but it’s so much fun to be able to, again, paint the picture of the fights, and to add my imagination to Martha Wells’s imagination about these fights. So, yes, it’s a challenge, because sometimes I get a little too loud, and have to go back and redo some of the things, but I love the challenge. It is so exciting to me. I tell you, I’m so busy with audiobooks, and because I have to read a certain amount of plays in my job as an artistic director and theater director, I don’t get to read much for pleasure anymore, unless it’s recipes, and reading these books has become the most delightful job of my life. So, I get very excited to do all of the books that I record, because I get to read, and I get to add my imagination to what is already on the page. So, yes, the action sequences are challenging, but they’re so exciting to do. I feel like I am making a movie with my voice.

Read reviews of Kevin R. Free’s audiobooks on his audiography on AudioFile’s website.

Photo of Kevin R. Free by Max Flatow.

Narrator Marin Ireland is one of AudioFile’s 2023 Golden Voice narrators. Marin joined Behind the Mic host Jo Reed to discuss her acting career, getting her start in audiobook narration, and her remarkable ability to breathe life into characters through her voice. Marin won an Audie Award for Best Female Narration in 2020 for her work on Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson.

Marin Ireland is gifted with the versatility to voice a range of characters, and the emotional intelligence and skill to reveal the nuances of any story, particularly fiction audiobooks. Her work has earned her recognition on AudioFile‘s Best Audiobooks lists for years, including This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Her narration of Fredrik Backman’s Beartown series is especially loved by audiobook listeners.

Listen in to Marin’s conversation with Jo to learn more how she discovers the voices for the many characters she narrates, insights into voicing favorite audiobooks, and what she loves most about narrating.

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From the conversation: 

Jo Reed: You’re such a busy actor. How do you choose what projects to take on as narrator? What books are you drawn to?

Marin Ireland: You know, I’ve been so lucky because the only things I think I’ve really said no to are when I’m just too booked up with everything else. And a lot of times, especially if it’s TV, I don’t know my schedule far enough in advance and I can’t schedule things in the way they need to be scheduled. But mostly the books that have come my way have been just dreamy and usually really thrilling, like, “Oh, my god, I can’t believe I get to do this person’s book. That’s so cool.” You know? That kind of stuff.

I’m terrible at saying no in my career. But the things that really excite me, it always just comes down to good writing. Especially in this moment, we’re in the writer’s strike—there is no world, there are no people, no characters, nothing without them. And for them to make a whole world and people out of nothing, out of thin air, it’s just astonishing to me.

So, if the writing is great, then it makes my job so easy. If the writing is less than great, it’s bumpier, it’s harder for me to hear the sentences, it’s harder for me to hear the voice and hear the characters. But I don’t feel like that’s really happened for me. I’ve been really lucky.

JR: Well, one book that you narrated, and it’s just wonderful—in fact, you won an Audie Award for Best Female Narrator—is Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, which is a book I read first and then listened to your narration of it. And oh my god, it’s so good! Tell me that experience of narrating that book. It had to have been memorable for you.

MI: That was a completely out-of-body experience. I did not want it to end, and because it’s first person, I think I read half of that book before I went in the booth, so I did not know where it was ending. And I didn’t want to stop playing that person. I didn’t want to stop being that person. I remember I didn’t want to leave the studio after.

I was just hanging out. It was such a huge emotional experience for me. I felt like I just stepped into this person and didn’t want to stop. The people all came right to me. I saw them all, I saw everything in it, and I was so emotional by the end of it, I just felt like I had this very profound connection to that narrative voice.

Kevin Wilson, because it was such a big experience for me, I reached out to him, we became kind of pen pals. So, we still keep in touch. It’s very, very sweet, and I’ve just read all of his things, all of his stories and everything. We became pals because I was like, “Somehow what you wrote, I locked right into it and it was a real big experience for me.” So, it was meaningful to be recognized in that way for something that was so special. That doesn’t always happen, you know?

JR: Yeah, I was going to ask you if you reach out to authors when you narrate books. You did with Kevin, but that was after the book rather than before.

MI: Yeah, every so often. Every so often. But it’s usually pretty rare. I’ve done an interview with Anthony Doerr, I did a Zoom Q&A with him where we kind of interviewed each other as part of his press tour, which was really extraordinary. He’s the loveliest person. And similarly, I’ve had interactions online with Fredrik Backman and a few other people.

Oh, Jenny Jackson when I was doing Pineapple Street, she stopped by the studio to listen in when I was recording, which was actually one of the most stressful moments. I was like, “Oh, gosh, I hope she likes what I was doing.” That was one of the only times I’ve had somebody in that space in real time. And I was like, “Oh, boy, I hope it’s okay. Tell me what you want me to do.” So, I feel really starstruck when I get to meet novelists, I have to say. I think of novelists as these wizards. So, I feel very starstruck by them.

JR: What’s the best part of audiobook narration for you?

MI: Oh, gosh.

JR: What’s your most favorite? What came to mind when I asked that?

MI: Playing parts I never would get to play. You know, playing little kids and old people and dudes and teenagers and all these parts I would never get to play that are so delightful.

JR: What does it mean for you to be named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine?

MI: My dream job before I ever was in a play would have been reading books. It’s very profound to me because my sister lives in Germany, I have family all over the country, and I feel like I’m reading books to them in my mind. Or feeling like, “Oh, my goodness, novelists, sometimes their friends and family might experience the book from me!” And that’s a huge, huge, beautiful responsibility and privilege and honor.

And so, to be recognized for a thing that is my biggest joy and my childhood made-up dream job is just, I feel I’m on cloud nine. To get to be recognized for something that you love to do, I don’t know if there’s a better sensation than that really, because you feel like it’s reaching people. You just feel you’re sending your voice out there into the void. And to feel like what I’m pouring into it is being received is a really beautiful and very fulfilling sensation. I’m very grateful.

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Read reviews of Marin’s many audiobooks in her audiography on AudioFile’s website.

Photo of Marin Ireland by Corey Nickols/Getty.

Narrator Nicholas Boulton joined host Jo Reed on our Behind the Mic podcast to talk about being named a 2023 Golden Voice. Nicholas is an accomplished actor on stage and screen and in audio, with more than 100 audiobooks to his name. He’s celebrated for the pure quality of his voice, his facility for character, and an unerring instinct for storytelling. While he’s well known for his narration in classics and historical romance audiobooks, he has a great range that includes fantasy, history, biography, and contemporary fiction.

Behind the Mic host Jo Reed spoke with Nicholas in 2021 at the launch of our Audiobook Break podcast, which featured his narration of David Copperfield. In today’s bonus episode, Jo and Nicholas catch up on some of his recent projects and discuss becoming a Golden Voice.

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From the conversation: 

Jo Reed: I began our conversation by asking Nick to remind us what drew him to theater originally.

Nicholas Boulton: I just always found it a huge amount of fun. There’s something indefinable about it. It’s just the atmosphere of it and the terror of it. And something to do with that sense of free falling just before you walk on stage that is absolutely terrifying but then it kind of mutates into something when you’re out there, and when you combine that with professional work, when you’ve done all your rehearsals and all of your research and you’ve learnt your lines, most importantly, it turns into something really kind of seducing.

JR: Now how did you move into narrating audiobooks?

NB: Well, I kind of fell into it. I mean, I’ve always been a predominantly audio actor, I suppose. I started my career on the Radio Drama Company for the BBC, which naturally made me lean towards looking into all the different art forms of audio, of voice acting, I suppose. And I was just asked to do an audiobook, and I had a crack at it and found it quite daunting and not a little exhausting. I mean, it’s tough work. But enjoyable as well. I mean, there’s something about immersing yourself in a story and all its characters that’s just really, really nice.

JR: How do you prepare for narrating a book?

NB: Well, I suppose, there’s different ways. I have a kind of a different tool set for each different kind of work that I’m doing. I’ve done some Dickens in the past and Wilkie Collins and a lot of 19th-century classics, for example, which I may or may not have read beforehand. And in that case, I’ll do all my research online. I’ll look into and find out all the information that I can and then I will skim as fast and efficiently as I can through the book to settle the characters and plot points. And then I like to keep the rest of it as fresh as possible.

JR: You’re best known for narrating classic literature and historical romance, but you’re also doing a good bit of history like The Bounty or His Majesty’s Airship. And I just wonder what the difference is between narrating fiction and nonfiction for you.

NB: Well, I suppose when you’re narrating fiction you can let your imagination run wild. And depending on the style of writing, you can fit yourself to how large the characters you want to make them. With factual concerns, historical documents and so on, you’re a little more constrained to keep it as real and as listenable as you can. I mean, that’s not to say that when you’re doing fiction you can just really let rip all the time, because that’d be very difficult to listen to, I’m sure. But with the characters that pop up in, for example, any of Dickens’s works, they’re so colorfully written that most of the work’s done for you and if you just lend yourself to it and bring in your own experience and you can create something which hopefully is the sort of thing that the listeners want.

JR: Let’s talk about the voices that you create by talking about a recent fantasy that you narrated, A Rake of His Own, which has such a wide range of characters from human to fey to everything in between. How do you land on a voice, and what’s the process for determining a voice for any given character?

NB: I wish I knew. I mean, mostly it’s instinctive, I think. You get a feel. You’ve got all the pointers in the text as to potentially what class they are, what social class, what kind of education they may have had. And then of course, the character traits as to whether they are kind of, a heroic character, an ingratiating character or a just downright evil character. And then you look at that and make your choices, I suppose. And I find myself doing the voices before I’ve decided on them. So if it comes out and it’s right, it’s right. And if it doesn’t, then I’ll go in and kind of fine tune.

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Find many more reviews of Nicholas’s audiobooks on his audiography page, and be sure to follow our Behind the Mic podcast on your favorite podcast platform to hear our upcoming interviews with Kevin R. Free and Marin Ireland, our additional Golden Voice narrators for 2023.

Photo of Nicholas Boulton by Dan Reid.

AudioFile’s Jo Reed spoke with poet and author Kwame Alexander about his new memoir for an adult audience, Why Fathers Cry at Night. Alexander is the author of many award-winning audiobooks for young listeners, including The Door of No Return, An American Story, and Light for the World to See. He’s a familiar voice on NPR’s Morning Edition, and a Disney+ streaming series based on his book The Crossover has just been released.

In their interview, Alexander shares his thoughts about his parents’ influence, how he came to poetry and to writing books for children and young adults, and his experience narrating this very personal memoir. Hear their full conversation on a special bonus episode of AudioFile’s Behind the Mic podcast, below.

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From the conversation: 

Jo Reed: Tell me a little bit about the book that just came out, Why Fathers Cry at Night.

Kwame Alexander: This is a book that was intended to be a book of love poems. I wanted to write about a sort of familial love, wanted to write about the love of a father for his children. I wanted to write about romantic love. It was just a way for me to share what I’ve been thinking and feeling over the past couple dozen years.

I started out writing love poems, my first maybe 10 books, and of course, the last 13 or 14 years I’ve been writing for children. So this was my sort of comeback to this place that I enjoyed and began writing in earnest.

Somewhere along the way, my editor said, “Kwame, there’s a story here you’re telling. Perhaps this is more than just a collection of love poems. Maybe you should write a prose piece.” I wrote one prose piece, and then she said, “Maybe you should write another.”

Then I wrote another one. Before you knew it, it was memoir-esque. Indeed, I was telling a story about my love life and everything I’ve learned about love, which, it turns out, ain’t a whole lot, but as a way to communicate to my daughters who I am as a father, as a husband, as a lover, as a divorced man, as a son. So, yeah, that’s where it ended. It started out as something completely different, but that’s where it ended.

JR: Memoir-esque is a great way of putting it, because the subtitle is “A memoir in love poems, letters, recipes, and remembrances.”

KA: Yeah, I thought about it like this. There’s a poet friend of mine who read it, her name’s Joanna, and she really helped me understand and glean exactly how this hybrid approach to writing this memoir came about, or how it is best described. That is, as a parent, oftentimes, you are cooking dinner, you are helping with homework, you are responding to a text from your lover.

You are chastising someone, you are reflecting on something that happened last weekend, and you’re thinking about your parents and hoping they’re okay, all at the same time. You don’t have the luxury of being able to separate and compartmentalize. I think that’s what the book is; it’s me just being, just living, just going through the daily happenings of all those things.

JR: Your mother’s love of reading played a really big role in your love of books. Can you tell us a little bit more about how your mom influenced your passion for reading and for writing?

KA: Both my parents were academics, but my dad practiced his sort of verbal mania at home, in addition to in his classrooms. So, if there was a word that was said around the house and we wanted to know what it meant, it was always like, “Go look it up. In fact, while you’re there, read the dictionary for half an hour.”

It was always, “Read these historical tomes” that he had in his garage, “Read these books.” As a kid, as a 9-, 10-, 11-year-old, nobody wants to read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. So, it was a laborious sort of task when it came to my dad, in terms of reading.

With my mom, it was more fun. It was more storytelling and song and rhythm and rhyme. My dad had written 16 books, but when I had a paper due, I went and I approached my mom to help me with it. When I was asked to be the youth speaker at our church on Fifth Sunday when I was 12, my mom was the person who helped me craft the speech, which I titled “You Made Your Bed, Now Sleep in It.”

So, yeah, my mom made it all seem fun and interesting and engaging, and my dad was definitely more informational and empowerment. I think I just got really lucky, Jo, because I got the best of those worlds, and I was able to fuse them together, and that has sort of been, for lack of a better word, my brand.

JR: You’ve written many books, and you narrated a few of them, like Booked and Swing. You also narrated Why Fathers Cry at Night. What made you decide you were going to narrate that book?

KA: I always thought that I should be an audiobook narrator. It made sense. I was a performer, I had been doing this for a minute, and I remember when The Crossover came out, I asked my publisher if I could do the audiobook, and they were like, “Nah, you’re not a professional.” But eventually, the publisher got it, and I’ve been asked to do every book since then, and maybe I’ve done about half. Why Fathers Cry at Night was a no-brainer.

I’ve written 37 books, and this was the first book for which I was not making up a story. It was my story. I felt like I was going to have to talk about my childhood. I was going to have to talk about my daughters. I was going to have to talk about my mom. No one else could do that, and I felt like that was really important.

So we recorded it over the course of a couple days, and I remember, we’re getting to the end of day two, and there was this piece about my mother. It was called “Rebound,” and I knew what that piece was going to do, but it’s not at the end of the book, it’s toward the end. But when we got to it, I said, “I cannot read this. This needs to be the last thing I do before we leave the studio,” and they obliged. So, we got to that piece, and it’s like a six-, seven-, eight-minute piece, and I read it, and everyone in the studio, including myself, was just a river of tears. It was a really powerful moment, and I’m just glad I got to read it. That was a big part of my healing, in a way, too.

*

Visit our website for reviews of Kwame Alexander’s many excellent audiobooks. Be sure to follow our Behind the Mic podcast on your favorite podcast platform for more audiobook recommendations and conversations with authors and narrators.

Kwame Alexander photo by Ryan Maher.

Host Jo Reed spoke with author Brad Meltzer and Golden Voice narrator Scott Brick about their longtime collaboration, and about Meltzer’s new nonfiction audiobook, The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, out now. Both truly appreciate the other’s work—listen to their conversation about their many years of working together on audiobooks, the research that goes into the writing and narration of Meltzer’s works, and the differences between narrating action-packed thrillers and history audiobooks that uncover shocking stories for listeners.

To listen to the whole archive of Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine, subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

This week on the podcast we’re revisiting favorite audiobooks from our years on Behind the Mic. Today’s discussion is about Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, an Earphones and Audie Award winner read by Nicole Lewis. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss the memorable debut novel on race, privilege, and money and the lively narration that will keep anyone glued to their earbuds. An excellent gift for fans of fiction audiobooks.

To listen to the whole archive of Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine, subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

AudioFile is revisiting some favorite audiobooks this week, with your holiday gift lists in mind. Today’s audiobook discussion has AudioFile’s Alan Minskoff and host Jo Reed talking all about babkas, bagels, and more culinary delights from the iconic New York deli, Zabar’s. Erin Bennett narrates this family memoir that’s also a slice of New York City history, bringing the right blend of appreciation and conviction to her narration. The perfect gift—perhaps with babka or rugelach in hand.

To listen to the whole archive of Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine, subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

We’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes this week on the podcast, with holiday gift giving in mind. Today’s discussion has host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Emily Connelly talking about the perfect gift for any animal lover, natural history nerd, or budding scientist in your life. Ed Yong’s narration of his An Immense World is full of charm and enthusiasm, and the audiobook is packed with facts that will broaden your view of the world around you.

To listen to the whole archive of Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine, subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

AudioFile is revisiting some of our favorite episodes this week, this time with holiday gift giving in mind. Listen to hear host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Robin Whitten discuss Life on the Mississippi, Rinker Buck’s tale of an unusual journey narrated by Jason Culp. It makes for an ideal gift for a history lover in your life, as Buck recounts his 2016 journey down the Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers in a flatboat.

To listen to the whole archive of Behind the Mic with AudioFile Magazine, subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.