Us Against Alzheimer’s: Stories of Family, Love, and Faith

Marita Golden is the award-winning author of sixteen works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Wide Circumference of Love, a 2017 NPR Best Book and 2018 NAACP Image Award nominee, published by Arcade. She is the cofounder and president emeritus of the Hurston/Wright Foundation and a veteran teacher of writing. She has served as a member of the faculties of the MFA graduate creative writing programs at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MA creative writing program at John Hopkins University, and has taught writing internationally to a variety of constituencies. A longtime resident of Washington, DC, she currently lives in Mitchellville, Maryland.

George Vradenburg is chairman of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, which he cofounded in October 2010. He was named by US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to serve on the Advisory Council on Research, Care, and Services established by the National Alzheimer’s Project Act and has testified before Congress about the global Alzheimer’s pandemic.

David Shenk is the author of five national bestsellers including The Forgetting, Data Smog, and, most recently, The Immortal Game. He is a contributor to National Geographic, Slate, Gourmet, Harper’s, the New Yorker, NPR, and PBS.

Read by Arthur Morey, Joe Barrett, Adenrele Ojo, Pam Ward, Ann Richardson, Roxanne Hernandez, Mirron Willis, Robin Miles, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Caroline Shaffer, Pamela Almand, Janina Edwards, Hillary Huber, Nancy Wu, Mark Branhall, Karen White, Neil Shah, and Erica Sullivan

Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.

Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.

Pam Ward, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress’ Talking Books program. The fact that she can work with Blackstone Audio from the beauty of the mountains of Southern Oregon is an unexpected bonus.

Ann Richardson is an Earphones-winning narrator who studied broadcast journalism and Spanish at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Years later, the desire to take up a creative yet productive career lead her to narrating audiobooks and founding Great Plains Audiobooks, an audiobook publishing company focusing on bringing Midwestern literature to audio.

Roxanne Hernandez is an audio narrator and a top narrator choice for young adult, adult drama, and Latin American/Chicano literature. She was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2011.

Mirron Willis—actor of film, stage, and television—is the winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2012 and a finalist for the Audie in 2015, as well as the winner of four AudioFile Earphones Awards for his audiobook recordings. He has worked extensively in film and television and on stage with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Shakespeare Festival, and the Ensemble Theatre, among others. He has recorded some 150 audiobooks, including the Smokey Dalton series by Kris Nelscott and My Song by Harry Belafonte. He resides and records audiobooks on his family’s historic ranch in East Texas.

Robin Miles, named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, has twice won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, an Audie Award for directing, and many Earphones Awards. Her film and television acting credits include The Last Days of Disco, Primary Colors, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order, New York Undercover, National Geographic’s Tales from the Wild, All My Children, and One Life to Live. She regularly gives seminars to members of SAG and AFTRA actors’ unions, and in 2005 she started Narration Arts Workshop in New York City, offering audiobook recording classes and coaching. She holds a BA degree in theater studies from Yale University, an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama, and a certificate from the British American Drama Academy in England.

Joniece Abbott-Pratt has narrated many audiobooks for children, young adults, and adults. She has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and in 2021 was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Fantasy Narration. She earned an MFA degree in acting from the University of Iowa and has performed on regional theater stages across the country, including the Public Theater in New York City. She has also appeared on television shows, including The Good Fight, Law and Order: SVU, Luke Cage, and Orange Is the New Black, and has voiced commercials and projects for US Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and others.

Caroline Shaffer is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A former company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for nineteen years, she received an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater.

Pamela Almand, a former international 747 pilot for Delta Airlines, launched an unlikely second career after appearing in a national television spot for Tylenol in 1995. Several regional spots for Northwest Airlines followed, and she began narrating training and industry videos, built a professional recording studio, and launched the Captain’s Voice. Since then, Pamela has provided voice-over for major corporate clients worldwide, including Microsoft, Disney, Canadian Realtors, the United Nations, Zurich, International Red Cross, and the hotels and casinos of Monte Carlo. She is a SAG/AFTRA voice actor and audiobook narrator with multiple awards and nominations from the Audio Publishers Association’s Audie Awards, Society of Voice Arts and Sciences’ Voice Arts Awards, and AudioFile magazine’s Earphones Award. She lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida, with her husband, Amos.

Janina Edwards, an Earphone Award–winning narrator, is a graduate of the acting program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.

Nancy Wu has narrated audiobooks since 2004, winning three AudioFile Earphones Awards. A New York theater, television, and film actor, she has recorded in studios all over the world—from Italy to Switzerland to Thailand. Her credits include Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Hope & Faith, All My Children, Made for Each Other, and the Oscar-nominated film Frozen River.

Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.

Karen White has been narrating audiobooks of all genres since 1999. Honored to be included in AudioFile’s Best Voices, she’s also a four-time Audie Finalist and has earned multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and Library Journal starred reviews.

Neil Shah is an Audie-nominated and multi AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator who has recorded over 250 audiobooks spanning across almost every genre, as well as numerous long-form journalism articles. AudioFile magazine has commended him for “an absolutely mesmerizing listening experience” and as “an outstanding narrator who adds a healthy dose of personality to each of the characters.” As a classically trained actor, he has appeared off Broadway and on regional stages, as well as in film and television. He records from his home studio in Oregon’s beautiful Wine Country.

Erica Sullivan is a professional actress of both stage and screen and holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She has spent over a decade as a Company Member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has been busy in both the stage and screen world, and has also narrated nearly one hundred audiobooks.