Wiley makes her voice heard — through audiobooks

Students who pursue theatre degrees may find a foothold in a field that's booming: audiobook narration.

Theatre professor emerita Elizabeth Wiley has made a name for herself in the booming field of audiobook narration. (Photo by Asha McLaughlin)

To the perennial question undergraduate actors get about what they can do with a degree in theatre, professor emerita Elizabeth Wiley has (at least) one answer: Read books. Aloud.

Wiley, who taught acting at William & Mary for 27 years, has been pointing students to audiobook narration for more than a decade, before and since she retired in 2021. A classically trained actor, Wiley recorded her first audiobook in 2012 while still teaching acting, dialect and voice for the stage.

As she immersed herself in the field, she brought her students along. A small stable of her alumni - Rebecca Gibel '01, Karen Novack '02, Arthur Rowan '01 and others - have made a name for themselves by narrating books, too.

"Liz gave me such an incredible foundation in terms of how to analyze texts and how to trace the arc of a story," said Gibel, who has voiced more than 50 books in addition to a long list of credits in stage, television and film. While earning her Master of Fine Arts at Brown University, she auditioned for a BBC Audiobooks America (now Tantor Media) producer and got the job. "The skills Liz gave me allowed me to take a two-dimensional text and make it three-dimensional. That's what the producer recognized when I auditioned."

Wiley always hopes to see former students at audiobook workshops and conferences. Networking is vital. "You have to remind people that you're out there and make connections to get the next gig," she said.

That's par for the course for actors. "It's always a cobbling together of different jobs, but when I found audiobook narration I caught the wave of something that was growing exponentially," Wiley said.

Audiobook listening has grown tremendously in recent years. The industry experienced double-digit growth in 2024, increasing 13 percent over 2023 sales, according to the Audio Publishers Association. Total sales, according to the APA, increased to $2.22 billion in 2024, driven by digital downloads of audiobooks.

There's more to successful narration, of course, than just reading. "It sounds like a great gig reading out loud, but there's a lot of work and it really helps to have an acting background," Wiley said.

It's also open to more than "voice of God" types. "There is a misconception that you have to have a beautiful voice, but we need all vocal types," Wiley said. "There's a trend toward authenticity and really tapping into 'Whose story is this?'"

This fall, Wiley is a cover girl with her Earphones Award-winning audiobook, "Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin" by Sue Prideaux, featured on the cover of the August/September 2025 issue of AudioFile Magazine. In total, she has contributed to more than 220 audiobooks.

Different books, different preparation

Fiction requires getting to know characters and relationships, and Wiley examines the work as a whole to understand the connections and personalities within. Nonfiction involves research on names, places and background.

For Novack, the skills she learned in Wiley's classroom have been augmented by listening to Wiley's audiobooks.

"Listening to her narrate is a masterclass in accent work and character specificity. She slips seamlessly between numerous European accents and characters of all ages and genders," said Novack. Wiley once coached her for a play in which she portrayed a character who spoke with a French accent. "I have taken her coaching for that play and used it to create book characters ever since."

Wiley has earned nominations for the Audie Award (the "Oscars for audiobooks"), won an Earphones Award and a Voice Arts Award for her narration of "Under a War-Torn Sky" by L.M. Elliott, whose daughter, Megan Behm '11, was one of Wiley's acting students and is now a theatre professional working in D.C.

When Wiley first began narrating, she recorded her audiobooks in a studio located in Swem. COVID-19 changed that. Actors were out of work; audiobook narrators were still working.

"The big shift came when we were able to set up a home recording studio in a walk-in closet and still have a professional-grade product," she said.

Gibel said that was pivotal for her and her husband, also an actor, when theaters shut because of the pandemic. "Having a home studio meant being able to pay my rent," she said. Bonus: audiobook narrators are eligible to join the SAG-AFTRA union, through which they have both been able to get health insurance.

"When everything shuttered for two seasons, Charlie and I built a second audio booth in our house, so he could record audiobooks, too," Gibel said. "It saved our lives. And it sure beats waiting tables."

Susan Corbett, Communications Specialist

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