2025 Audie Award Winner - Best Young Adult Audiobook
AudioFile Earphones Award | IPPY Award
Wichita, summer 1968. The city’s redline still runs down the middle of TJ Crowley’s street. His father is gone. His brother is in Vietnam. His mother is unraveling. Then the Washingtons—a Black family with a daughter his age—move in next door.
TJ is thirteen, with a temper he can’t control and a man from his mother’s past who orders him to help build the fence between the two yards. “Stay away from them or you’re grounded for life,” his mother warns.
Then gospel music drifts through the fence. TJ has a choice to make.
A full-cast audio drama in three acts. Fifteen actors. Twenty-four roles. Original gospel music performed by the ARISE Ensemble. Co-produced by Audie Award-winning narrators Dion Graham and Tavia Gilbert.
“Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener.” —AudioFile Magazine
“Easy to see why this one was the winner.” —Audible
ADVISORY: Contains racist language and depictions of racial violence appropriate to its 1968 setting. Best suited for mature YA readers and adults.
Grant Overstake, a storyteller and educator, draws from his background as a former Miami Herald sports writer and decathlon All-American to write authentic sports themed novels of raw emotion. Grant and his wife, Claire, sing in the multicultural ARISE Ensemble, who’s music is featured in this program.
An award-winning producer and director with over 400 titles to her credit, May Wuthrich is a former actor with a background in traditional book publishing and book-to-screen script development
Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.
Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.
Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.
Kevin R. Free is an audiobook narrator and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several AudioFile best narrations of the year selections. Known for his work with young-adult novels, he has read titles by Rick Riordan, Walter Dean Myers, and Joe Haldeman. In 2011 he was named a Best Voice in Young Adult and Fantasy from AudioFile magazine for his narration of Myers’ The Cruisers: Checkmate.
Nicole Small (a.k.a. Shayna Small) is an actress/singer born and raised in Chicago. In the middle of her freshman year of high school she relocated to Baltimore to attend a performing arts school. She holds a BFA in drama at the Juilliard School. Her theater credits include Hurt Village and The Threepenny Opera.
Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.
Kirby Heyborne is a musician, actor, and professional narrator. Noted for his work in teen and juvenile audio, he has garnered over twenty Earphones Awards. His audiobook credits include Jesse Kellerman’s The Genius, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, and George R. R. Martin’s Selections from Dreamsongs.
Ari Fliakos is an actor with experience in television, radio, film, theater, and voice-overs. He has earned four Earphones Awards, and his narration of Seth Patrick’s Reviver won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration for paranormal fiction. On screen, he is best-known for his roles in Law & Order, Pills, and Company K.
Graham Halstead, an Earphones Award and Audie Award–winning narrator, is a professionally trained actor and voice artist. As an actor, he has worked internationally in Edinburgh and London, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. His youthful, easy-flowing voice can be heard on television and radio voicing spots for Airborne and Allegra.
Thérèse Plummer is an actor, award-winning voice-over artist, and counselor. She has won eighteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has appeared in a variety of television and film roles. As a counselor for adolescents, she spent five years using drama therapy techniques in individual and group settings.
Brittany Pressley has won several Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She has recorded over one hundred titles and has received several nominations for American Library Association’s annual list of Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults. She is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and voice actress. Her voice can be heard on national and international TV and radio commercials as well as several animated series and video games. She is a graduate of Columbia University.
Peter Berkrot, a forty-year veteran of stage and screen, has voiced over 450 audiobook titles, winning Earphones Awards, a 2012 Audie Award nomination, and a 2016 Audie Award.