Meet Our Narrators
Many NLS narrators are professional actors and/or voice-over artists who have won awards for skills in their fields. Do you have a few favorite narrators? You can search for your favorite narrators as easily as you can your favorite authors. Visit our catalog and BARD to learn more about searching by the name of narrators or contact your network library for help. To learn more about the narrators, their backgrounds, the books they have narrated, and their activities outside of NLS, select the NLS Narrator’s name below.
The Art of Narration
In September 2022, voice actors Michael Kramer, Kimberly Schraf, and Dawn Ursula gathered in DC for a panel on the art of creating an audiobook. Complete with surprising anecdotes from their decades of recording work and entertaining live narrations, their session will give you a new appreciation for the audiobooks you know and love.
Staying Involved with the Process
NLS adds talking books mainly from three sources:
- Commercial recording companies such as American Printing House for the Blind and Potomac Talking Book Services with which NLS has contracts.
- Audiobook producers such as Hachette Audio that provide NLS with their master recordings, to which NLS adds navigation features and encryption.
- And our own professional in-house studio, the NLS Media Lab, which records around 100 books each year.
Staying involved in the process of producing talking books helps NLS Media Lab and its narrators keep up-to-date of evolving techniques and technology. And it allows us to take on special projects, such as narrating the late US Rep. John Lewis’s graphic novel trilogy, “March,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” and Rep. Sharice Davids’ children’s book, “Sharice’s Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman,” which Davids herself read in the Media Lab.
Learn more about narrating books as a volunteer or professional on the NLS Studio Resources page. Find the two pronunciation guides NLS narrators use and curate: Say How?: A Pronunciation Guide to Names of Public Figures and the ABC Book: Acronyms, Brand Names, and Corporations. Longtime narrator Ray Hagen was instrumental in the initiation and development of NLS pronunciation guides; now everyone has access to them via the internet.
Narrators also develop and share tips on best practices for writing image descriptions for graphic novels and other highly visual content.