The Writer's Library: he Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives Audiobook

About the Authors

Nancy Pearl is known as “America’s Librarian.” She speaks about the pleasures of reading at library conferences and to literacy organizations and community groups throughout the world. She hosts a monthly television show, Book Lust with Nancy Pearl, and comments on books regularly on NPR’s Morning Edition. She won the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Foundation. Among her many other honors are the 2004 Women’s National Book Association Award, the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from Library Journal, and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. She received a master’s degree in library science in 1967 from the University of Michigan and an MA degree in history from Oklahoma State University in 1977.

Jeff Schwager is a Seattle-based writer, editor, producer, and playwright who has also had a successful career as an entertainment and media executive. He has written extensively on books, movies, music, and theater, and has interviewed many of the most esteemed artists in each of those mediums. In 2013, Book-It Repertory Theatre produced his acclaimed adaptation of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. The following year, the company’s five-hour stage version of his dramatization of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won Theatre Puget Sound’s prestigious Gregory Award for Outstanding Production of 2014.

About the Narrators

Andrew Eiden, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor and voice artist. He has been acting since the age of four, working at regional theaters including La Mirada Theatre, the Glendale Center Theatre, and the Pasadena Playhouse. He has starred in dozens of national commercials, guest-spotted on numerous television shows, and has been a series regular on three programs: Discovery Channel’s Outward Bound, Disney Channel’s Movie Surfers, and most notably ABC’s Complete Savages

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.

Dominic Hoffman, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice. He is a Los Angeles–based actor of stage, screen, and television. He has appeared in such television shows as The Shield, NYPD Blue, and The Jamie Foxx Show. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as well as the American Conservatory Theater.

Eileen Stevens is a voice-over actress whose voice can be heard on cartoons, promos, programs for English-language learners, and audiobooks. An Earphones Award–winning narrator, she is also an audiobook director and producer.

Piper Goodeve began narrating in 2011 and has since given voice to over a hundred titles. As a stage actress, Piper has appeared off Broadway as well as at theaters across the country, such as the McCarter, the Weston Playhouse, and Syracuse Stage. Happily splitting her time between Brooklyn and Vermont, Piper holds a BA from New York University and received her MFA in acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.

Kaleo Griffith is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator and classically trained actor. He graduated cum laude from Franklin Pierce University with a BA in theater, holds an MFA in acting from Rutgers University, and is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He has appeared in such television series as Law & Order and Reggie’s Family & Friends, among others.

Lameece Issaq is an actor, voice-over actor, playwright, screenwriter, and Founding Artistic Director of Obie-winning Noor Theatre.

Rick Adamson is an award-winning voice artist with more than twenty years’ experience in voiceovers, spoken word events, event announcing, and children’s media, as well as commercials for well-known international corporations. He has narrated numerous television and film documentaries, including Croatia, co-narrated with Martin Sheen. His audiobook narration includes more than two dozen major books, as well as dozens of early-reader titles for juveniles. He won the prestigious Audie Award in 2011 for Best Inspirational/Faith-Based Fiction for In a Heartbeat, and he was among the finalists for the 2006 Audie Award for Best Personal Development/Motivational Work for Younger Next Year. He earned an AudioFile Earphones Award for the ensemble narration of Rough Water.

JD Jackson is a theater professor, aspiring stage director, and award-winning audiobook narrator. He is a classically trained actor, and his television and film credits include roles on House, ER, Law & Order, Hack, Sherrybaby, Diary of a City Priest, and Lucky Number Slevin. He is the recipient of more than a dozen Earphones Awards for narration and an Odyssey Honor for G. Neri’s Ghetto Cowboy, and he was also named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of the Year for 2012 and 2013. An adjunct professor at Los Angeles Southwest College, he has an MFA in theater from Temple University.

Saskia Maarleveld is an experienced voice-over actress and Earphones Award–winning narrator. Raised in New Zealand and France, she is highly skilled with accents and dialects, and many of her books have been narrated entirely in accents other than her own. In addition to audiobooks, her voice can be heard in animation, video games, and commercials.

Timothy Andrés Pabon is an English- and Spanish-speaking voice-over artist who has worked extensively in advertising and audiobook narration. He has had acting roles on House of Cards and has also been a costar on HBO’s acclaimed series The Wire opposite country music legend Steve Earl. As a stage actor, he has worked off-Broadway at the June Havoc Theatre, and his regional credits include Center Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, the Hippodrome, Olney Theatre, Rep Stage, and GALA Hispanic Theatre.

Emily Woo Zeller is an artist, actor, dancer, choreographer, and voice artist who has won Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013 for her work in Gulp. Other awards include the 2009 Tristen Award for Best Actress as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the 2006 Roselyn E. Schneider Prize for Creative Achievement.

Richard Ford is the multiaward–winning author of short stories and numerous books, including Independence Day, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Both Canada and Let Me Be Frank with You made the New York Times bestsellers list.

Luís Alberto Urrea is the author of numerous works of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, including The Devil’s Highway, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and The House of Broken Angels, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, among many other honors, including the Lannan Literary Award, Edgar Award, Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize, American Book Award, Christopher Award, and more.

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. She is a founding editor of The Believer and coeditor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing center for youth. 

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of four novels, One Two Three, The Atlas of Love, Goodbye for Now, and This Is How It Always Is, which was a Reese’s Book Club Book Pick.

Siri Hustvedt is an award-winning novelist and author of a book of poetry, seven novels, four collections of essays, and a work of nonfiction. Her many awards include the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction for The Blazing World, which was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2019, she won an award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the European Essay Prize (Charles Veillon) for The Delusions of Certainty, a book-length essay on the mind-body problem, and the prestigious Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in Spain. She has a PhD in English literature from Columbia University and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her scholarly work is interdisciplinary, and she has published papers in various academic and scientific journals.

Laurie Keller is the acclaimed author-illustrator of Do Unto Otters; Arnie, the Doughnut; and The Scrambled States of America, among numerous others. She grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, and always loved to draw, paint, and write stories. She earned a BFA at Kendall College of Art and Design, then worked at Hallmark as a greeting card illustrator for over seven years, until one night she got an idea for a children’s book. She quit her job, moved to New York City, and had soon published her first book. She loved living in New York, but she has now returned to her home state, where she lives in a little cottage in the woods on the shore of Lake Michigan.