Julia Whelan has narrated 600 audiobooks and counting. So why isn't she paid like it?
You may have read her own writing, too. Whelan's first novel, 2018's 'My Oxford Year,' has been adapted to a Netflix film, out Friday, starring Sofia Carson. The story actually began as a screenplay by Allison Burnett and had been gestating in development for years. Whelan was brought in to help with the script because she had studied abroad at Oxford her junior year of college. Producers then asked if she thought it would make a good book.
'I was like, 'Nothing has ever wanted to be a book more. Please let me do this,'' she recalls. It ended up an international bestseller. Her second novel, 2022's 'Thank You For Listening,' was critically praised. ('Thank You For Listening' is about a former actor-turned-audiobook narrator who falls in love with another audiobook narrator.)
You may have even seen Whelan on TV — she began her career as a child actor, with roles in 'Fifteen and Pregnant' and on the series 'Once and Again.' Despite her various pursuits, though, she has no plans to leave narration behind. 'I feel like I was born to do it,' she said. 'It's everything that I love and that I'm good at and everything I want to be doing.'
That's a good thing, because the audiobook industry is growing. Statista projects this year it will reach $9.84 billion because of smartphones, the increased popularity of audio content and people's desire to multitask. Despite the appetite for audiobooks, for narrators, 'the financial aspect makes zero sense,' says Whelan. She's founded her own publishing company, Audiobrary, to help narrators get paid more fairly.
Whelan, who has narrated as many as 70 books in one year, spoke to The Associated Press about the audiobook industry, Audiobrary and her own writing. Answers are edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Why did you start your own audiobook publishing company?
WHELAN: The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that's how many books you have to do when you're first starting out to keep your head above water because the rates are low. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don't get royalties. As we've seen the industry grow and as we've seen the cache of certain narrators expand, and we know listeners will seek out audiobooks that their favorite narrators record. It doesn't make sense to me that we should be cut out of the long-term financial benefit of success. Audiobrary does a profit-share model with writers, who I also feel don't get enough percentage of the pie, and a royalty share for narrators. We are also a direct-to-consumer retail channel, so when you buy directly from us, you're not giving 50-75% of that sale to a retailer. You're giving it directly to the people who made the product.
AP: How do you prepare before narrating?
WHELAN: I create character lists. I create pronunciation lists, and I do the necessary research for that. The prep time can vary book to book significantly, depending on how complicated the book is.
AP: If you feel a cold coming on, do you panic? Do you have to protect your voice?
WHELAN: It ruins everything. I'm probably the only person left who wears a mask on a plane at this point, but everything falls apart if I get sick. You're messed up for three or four months. Everything just gets delayed, especially when I was doing 70 books a year, there's no room for error there.
AP: There are big-name celebrities who narrate audiobooks. Do you worry about them taking jobs?
WHELAN: At this point, there's still enough work to go around and they are doing the books that have the budget frankly to use them. But I think that audiobook fans — not your casual audiobook user, but fans — have favorite narrators and they're going to look for books by those narrators. So, in stunt-casting situations, sometimes someone is incredible at it, and they are perfect for the book. But sometimes it feels like a very craven, just marketing ploy. I don't feel infringed upon by them, but I do worry about a future situation where most of the work is going to AI. I don't lie awake at night worried, but everyone's threatened right now. It's very, very hard to even begin to predict what the future could look like.
AP: What do you say to people who are almost sheepish about admit
ting to listening to an audiobook instead of reading it?
WHELAN: I think the kids would say that it's ableist to say that if you didn't read a book with your eyeballs, then you didn't read it, considering many people have many limitations that would prevent them from physically reading a book. So then are you telling them they've never read a book before? Actual data and studies show that listening to a book actually triggers the same response in the brain as reading it, and that the interpretation and understanding of that book is on par with having read it.
AP: When do you see yourself writing another novel?
WHELAN: There's been about four ideas that are constantly in rotation, but I think I've narrowed it down. I think I'm ready to at least start exploring one of them at the beginning of next year.
AP: Do you think 'Thank You for Listening' could ever be adapted for the screen?
WHELAN: I very much think we could. I have said no up to this point because, this time around, I want to be very creatively involved. There's just too many things about audiobooks that someone could get wrong not knowing anything about the industry. I want be involved so I'm willing to hold onto it until the right situation comes along.
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Winnipeg Free Press
31-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Julia Whelan has narrated 600 audiobooks and counting. So why isn't she paid like it?
Chances are, you've heard Julia Whelan's voice. She's the award-winning narrator behind more than 600 audiobooks by a long list of bestselling authors including Taylor Jenkins Reid,Emily Henry, Michael Crichton, V.E. Schwab and Kristin Hannah. She's also narrated long-form articles for The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair. You may have read her own writing, too. Whelan's first novel, 2018's 'My Oxford Year,' has been adapted to a Netflix film, out Friday, starring Sofia Carson. The story actually began as a screenplay by Allison Burnett and had been gestating in development for years. Whelan was brought in to help with the script because she had studied abroad at Oxford her junior year of college. Producers then asked if she thought it would make a good book. 'I was like, 'Nothing has ever wanted to be a book more. Please let me do this,'' she recalls. It ended up an international bestseller. Her second novel, 2022's 'Thank You For Listening,' was critically praised. ('Thank You For Listening' is about a former actor-turned-audiobook narrator who falls in love with another audiobook narrator.) You may have even seen Whelan on TV — she began her career as a child actor, with roles in 'Fifteen and Pregnant' and on the series 'Once and Again.' Despite her various pursuits, though, she has no plans to leave narration behind. 'I feel like I was born to do it,' she said. 'It's everything that I love and that I'm good at and everything I want to be doing.' That's a good thing, because the audiobook industry is growing. Statista projects this year it will reach $9.84 billion because of smartphones, the increased popularity of audio content and people's desire to multitask. Despite the appetite for audiobooks, for narrators, 'the financial aspect makes zero sense,' says Whelan. She's founded her own publishing company, Audiobrary, to help narrators get paid more fairly. Whelan, who has narrated as many as 70 books in one year, spoke to The Associated Press about the audiobook industry, Audiobrary and her own writing. Answers are edited for clarity and brevity. AP: Why did you start your own audiobook publishing company? WHELAN: The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that's how many books you have to do when you're first starting out to keep your head above water because the rates are low. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don't get royalties. As we've seen the industry grow and as we've seen the cache of certain narrators expand, and we know listeners will seek out audiobooks that their favorite narrators record. It doesn't make sense to me that we should be cut out of the long-term financial benefit of success. Audiobrary does a profit-share model with writers, who I also feel don't get enough percentage of the pie, and a royalty share for narrators. We are also a direct-to-consumer retail channel, so when you buy directly from us, you're not giving 50-75% of that sale to a retailer. You're giving it directly to the people who made the product. AP: How do you prepare before narrating? WHELAN: I create character lists. I create pronunciation lists, and I do the necessary research for that. The prep time can vary book to book significantly, depending on how complicated the book is. AP: If you feel a cold coming on, do you panic? Do you have to protect your voice? WHELAN: It ruins everything. I'm probably the only person left who wears a mask on a plane at this point, but everything falls apart if I get sick. You're messed up for three or four months. Everything just gets delayed, especially when I was doing 70 books a year, there's no room for error there. AP: There are big-name celebrities who narrate audiobooks. Do you worry about them taking jobs? WHELAN: At this point, there's still enough work to go around and they are doing the books that have the budget frankly to use them. But I think that audiobook fans — not your casual audiobook user, but fans — have favorite narrators and they're going to look for books by those narrators. So, in stunt-casting situations, sometimes someone is incredible at it, and they are perfect for the book. But sometimes it feels like a very craven, just marketing ploy. I don't feel infringed upon by them, but I do worry about a future situation where most of the work is going to AI. I don't lie awake at night worried, but everyone's threatened right now. It's very, very hard to even begin to predict what the future could look like. AP: What do you say to people who are almost sheepish about admit ting to listening to an audiobook instead of reading it? WHELAN: I think the kids would say that it's ableist to say that if you didn't read a book with your eyeballs, then you didn't read it, considering many people have many limitations that would prevent them from physically reading a book. So then are you telling them they've never read a book before? Actual data and studies show that listening to a book actually triggers the same response in the brain as reading it, and that the interpretation and understanding of that book is on par with having read it. AP: When do you see yourself writing another novel? WHELAN: There's been about four ideas that are constantly in rotation, but I think I've narrowed it down. I think I'm ready to at least start exploring one of them at the beginning of next year. AP: Do you think 'Thank You for Listening' could ever be adapted for the screen? WHELAN: I very much think we could. I have said no up to this point because, this time around, I want to be very creatively involved. There's just too many things about audiobooks that someone could get wrong not knowing anything about the industry. I want be involved so I'm willing to hold onto it until the right situation comes along.
Winnipeg Free Press
17-07-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Ari Aster made a movie about polarized America. ‘Eddington' has been polarizing
NEW YORK (AP) — A Post-it note sat near Ari Aster while he wrote 'Eddington': 'Remember the phones.' 'Eddington' may be set during the pandemic, but the onset of COVID-19 isn't its inciting incident. Outside the fictional New Mexico town, a data center is being built. Inside Eddington, its residents — their brains increasingly addled by the internet, social media, smartphones and whatever is ominously emanating from that data center — are growing increasingly detached from one another, and from each other's sense of reality. 'We're living in such a weird time and we forget how weird it is,' Aster says. 'Things have been weird ever since we were able to carry the internet on our person. Ever since we began living in the internet, things have gotten weirder and weirder.' 'It's important to keep reminding ourselves: This is weird.' Moviegoers have grown accustomed to expecting a lack of normalcy in Aster's movies. His first three films — 'Hereditary,' 'Midsommar,' 'Beau Is Afraid' — have vividly charted strange new pathways of dread and deep-rooted anxiety. Those fixations make Aster, a master of nightmare and farce, uniquely suited to capturing the current American moment. 'Eddington,' which A24 releases in theaters Friday, may be the most prominent American movie yet to explicitly wrestle with social and political division in the U.S. In a showdown between Joaquin Phoenix's bumbling right-wing sheriff and Pedro Pascal's elitist liberal mayor, arguments over mask mandates, Black Lives Matter protests and elections spiral into a demented Western fever dream. At a time when our movie screens are filled with escapism and nostalgia, 'Eddington' dares to diagnose something frightfully contemporary. Aster, in a recent interview at an East Village coffee shop he frequents, said he couldn't imagine avoiding it. 'To not be talking about it is insane,' he said. 'I'm desperate for work that's wrestling with this moment because I don't know where we are. I've never been here before,' says Aster. 'I have projects that I've been planning for a long time. They make less sense to me right now. I don't know why I would make those right now.' Predictably polarizing 'Eddington,' appropriately enough, has been divisive. Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Aster's film has had one of the most polarizing receptions of the year among critics. Even in Cannes, Aster seemed to grasp its mixed response. 'I don't know what you think,' he told the crowd. Some critics have suggested Aster's film is too satirical of the left. 'Despite a pose of satirical neutrality, he mainly seems to want to score points off mask-wearers, young progressives, anti-racists and other targets beloved of reactionaries,' wrote The New Yorker's Justin Chang. For The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote: 'Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him.' Aster was expecting a divisive reaction. But he disputes some of the discourse around 'Eddington.' 'I heard one person say it was harder on the left than the right, and I think that's pretty disingenuous,' he says. 'In the film, one side is kind of annoying and frustrating and hypocritical, and the other side is killing people and destroying lives.' For Aster, satirizing the left doesn't mean he doesn't share their beliefs. 'If there's no self-reflection,' he says, 'how are we ever going to get out of this?' Capturing 'what was in the air' Aster began writing 'Eddington' in June 2020. He set it in New Mexico, where his family moved when he was 10. Aster wanted to try to capture the disconnect that didn't start with the pandemic but then reached a surreal crescendo. He styled 'Eddington' as a Western with smartphones in place of guns — though there are definitely guns, too. 'The dread I was living with suddenly intensified. And to be honest, I've been living with that level of dread ever since,' Aster says. 'I just wanted to see if I could capture what was in the air.' Scripts that dive headlong into politics are far from regular in today's corporate Hollywood. Most studios would be unlikely to distribute a film like 'Eddington,' though A24, the indie powerhouse, has stood behind Aster even after 2023's $35 million-budgeted 'Beau Is Afraid' struggled at the box office. A24 has shown a willingness to engage with political discord, backing last year's speculative war drama, 'Civil War.' And Aster's screenplay resonated with Phoenix, who had starred in 'Beau Is Afraid,' and with Pascal. In Cannes, Pascal noted that 'it's very scary to participate in a movie that speaks to issues like this.' For Phoenix, 'Eddington' offered clarity and empathy for the pandemic experience. 'We were all terrified and we didn't fully understand it. And instead of reaching out to each other in those moments, we kind of became antagonistic toward each other and self-righteous and certain of our position,' Phoenix earlier told The AP. 'And in some ways it's so obvious: Well, that's not going to be helpful.' 'A time of total obscenity' Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. Since Aster made 'Eddington' — it was shot in 2024 — the second administration of President Donald Trump has ushered in a new political reality that Aster acknowledges would have reshaped his film. 'I would have made the movie more obscene,' he says. 'And I would have made it angrier. I think the film is angry. But I think we're living in a time of total obscenity, beyond anything I've seen.' 'Eddington' is designed to be argued over. Even those who find its first half well-observed may recoil at the violent absurdism of its second half. The movie, Aster says, pivots midway and, itself, becomes paranoid and gripped by differing world views. You can almost feel Aster struggling to bring any coherence to his, and our, modern-day Western. But whatever you make of 'Eddington,' you might grant it's vitally important that we have more films like it — movies that don't tiptoe around today in period-film metaphor or avoid it like the plague. Aster, at least, doesn't sound finished with what he started. 'I'm feeling very heartbroken about where we are, and totally lost, so I'm looking for ways to go into those feelings but also to challenge them. What can be done?' Aster says. 'Because this is a movie about people who are unreachable to each other and completely siloed off, or fortressed off, a question that kept coming to me was: What would an olive branch look like? How do we find a way to reengage with each other?'
Winnipeg Free Press
25-06-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Zohran Mamdani's wife Rama Duwaji is an animator, illustrator and ceramicist. And they met on Hinge
NEW YORK (AP) — Rama Duwaji's Election Day post on Instagram was only four words long, but said all it needed to say: 'couldn't possibly be prouder.' It was accompanied by a photo-booth strip of happy poses with her husband, Zohran Mamdani, and a voting selfie that would presage a momentous night: The 33-year-old state assemblyman would stun the political world — and opponent Andrew Cuomo — with his success in the race for the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor. While the ultimate outcome has yet to be confirmed by a ranked choice count, many across the country woke up Wednesday eager to learn more both about Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who's now poised to be the nominee, and also about Duwaji, an animator and illustrator originally from Damascus, Syria, according to her Instagram bio. Mamdani kissed her hand during his victory speech to supporters, thanking 'my incredible wife.' In her art career, Duwaji has worked with The New Yorker, The Washington Post, the BBC, Apple, Spotify, VICE and the Tate Modern museum in London, among others, according to one bio page. 'Using drawn portraiture and movement, Rama examines the nuances of sisterhood and communal experiences,' it says. Duwaji also enjoys taking a break from her tech-based art to create her own ceramics, particularly illustrated plates in blue and white. And there's one very contemporary (and much-mentioned) fact that's emerged about the couple: They met on Hinge, the dating app. 'I met my wife on Hinge so there is still hope in those dating apps,' Mamdani said, laughing, on a recent episode of The Bulwark podcast. About six weeks ago the candidate posted a romantic set of photos showing the couple on their wedding day at the city clerk's office earlier this year. The lead photo was a black-and-white shot on the New York subway, specifically at Union Square in Manhattan. The smiling couple held onto a pole, Duwaji dressed in a white dress and boots and holding a bouquet, as other riders minded their own business. In the accompanying text, Mamdani referred to online harassment the couple had experienced. 'If you take a look at Twitter today, or any day for that matter, you know how vicious politics can be,' he wrote. 'I usually brush it off, whether it's death threats or calls for me to be deported. But it's different when it's about those you love. Three months ago, I married the love of my life, Rama, at the City Clerk's office. Now, right-wing trolls are trying to make this race — which should be about you — about her.' 'Rama isn't just my wife,' Mamdani added. 'She's an incredible artist who deserves to be known on her own terms. You can critique my views, but not my family.' In an April interview on art and activism, Duwaji was asked if artists had a responsibility to speak out about global issues. 'I'll always quote Nina Simone: 'An artist's duty as far as I'm concerned is to reflect the times,'' she said. 'I believe everyone has a responsibility to speak out against injustice,' she added, 'and art has such an ability to spread it. I don't think everybody has to make political work, but art is inherently political in how it's made, funded, and shared. Even creating art as a refuge from the horrors we see is political to me. It's a reaction to the world around us.' On Election Day, Duwaji's mother-in-law, filmmaker Mira Nair, posted a message to her daughter-in-law about art and its importance. 'Darling DIL — Art will flourish in our city in the new day,' Nair wrote, adding a heart emoji.
