Take the Mic: Fictional Stories of Everyday Resistance Audiobook

About the Authors

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He is also the 2020–2021 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Bethany C. Morrow is a national bestselling author. She is editor and contributor to the young adult anthology Take The Mic, which won the 2020 ILA Social Justice in Literature award. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Bustle, BuzzFeed, and more. She is included on USA Today’s list of 100 Black novelists and fiction writers you should read.

Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling author of Love, Hate & Other Filters. She was born in Bombay, India, and currently resides in Chicago.

Sofia Quintero is a hip hop activist, writer, and speaker in New York City. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and has worked with many social justice organizations throughout the country. She is also a screenwriter who has won recognition for her work. She still lives in the Bronx where she was born and raised and enjoys working with youth to find their voice through art and politics.

Yamile Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers, including Furia, a Reese's YA Book Club selection and the 2021 Inaugural Pura Belpré Young Adult Gold Medalist. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, and currently lives in Utah. An Inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she is also a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of Latine authors. Find her online at yamilemendez.com or on Instagram @yamilesmendez.

Laura Silverman is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.

Darcie Little Badger is an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunting. She is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. Her Locus Award-winning debut novel, Elatsoe, was a National Indie Bestseller, named to over a dozen best-of-year lists, and called one of the Best 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time by Time magazine.

Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.

About the Narrators

Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.

Soneela Nankani is an award-winning narrator with over three hundred titles in many different genres including Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi, and Nonfiction. She has garnered sixteen Earphones Awards, nominations for Audie and SOVAS awards, and was recently awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Honor. Her audiobooks have been featured in Best Audiobooks lists by AudioFile magazine and the Washington Post, among others. In her spare time, she loves to read (yes, really), learn languages, try new recipes, and travel. She lives in the DC area with her husband and two mischievous daughters.

Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.