“I just cast him in a sci-fi book.”įollow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. “I didn’t cast him in stories of black characters in sci-fi,” Mattler said. The fact that he had done urban fiction did not lead her to think he could do only that. Mattler then checked out some of Hite’s samples. “The thing about audiobooks is that it’s a pretty small community,” she said. Jayme Mattler, the director-producer who cast Hite on the sci-fi anthology, first met him at a recording studio in Queens, but she already knew of him because of his good reputation. “There absolutely needs to be appropriate casting for minority representation.”
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On professional Facebook groups, for example, narrators are often seeking advice on whether they should accept books whose main characters are from a different ethnicity than theirs, Hellegers said. “It’s often bad technique that leads to cultural and racial stereotypes.” The field has become increasingly mindful of how narration choices can come across, he said. Hellegers tries to approach each role with respect by doing research, discussing with the writer and sharpening his voice skills, he said.
To narrate this debut novel by Zack Jordan, who is white, Zitt enlisted the actor and award-winning narrator Bahni Turpin, who is black. Take “The Last Human,” for instance, a space opera published in March about the galactic journey of an orphaned girl, described only as a human living among aliens. “It’s not just: ‘An older white man wrote this book, an older white man has to read it,’” he said. That includes promoting colorblind casting, especially when a story doesn’t specify the main character’s race. Zitt also said he’s been challenging the way casting decisions are being made. They found Somali actors in Minnesota, who recorded there while being directed remotely via Skype. To cast the two lead narrators of “ When Stars Are Scattered,” a graphic memoir about Somali boys growing up in a refugee camp in Kenya, Zitt’s team members looked beyond Los Angeles and New York, where their recording studios are. His team of 15 producers is on track to release more than 1,700 audiobooks this year.īut finding the right voice talent isn’t always easy. “It’s our job as producers to be respectful and sensitive to those voices and characters,” said Dan Zitt, the senior vice president of content production at Penguin Random House Audio. What does representation mean when actors can only be heard and not seen? What constitutes a black, Latino or Asian voice? And to complicate matters, in most audiobooks a single narrator voices multiple characters, who may have a variety of ethnicities and accents. Now the need to make the field more diverse for narrators of color has become a central issue for publishers.īut the particular demands of the job, compared with film and stage acting, make this tricky. To learn more about working at Audible, visit us the market has grown, so have opportunities for actors who, like Hite, are passionate about books and have the stamina to enact them. We also value our employees’ unique stories, so we place a premium on inclusion, belonging, kindness, and a fulfilling and energized life both inside and outside of the office. The work we do inspires, entertains and informs listeners around the world.
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