Tavia Gilbert is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, an Audie Award nominee, and a Parent’s Choice Award winner, and has performed over 100 full-length audiobook narrations. She makes her home in Portland, Maine, where she works on stage and behind the mic, producing, directing, and narrating audiobooks and full-cast recordings. She is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

You can find Tavia on line at  taviagilbert.com

About Audio Books:

AA/JP: How did you get started in audiobooks?

TG: I’ve been so lucky. I took a couple of workshops in animation and another in audiobook narration taught by Pat Fraley and Hillary Huber, and soon after attended APAC for the first time in 2007. While there I introduced myself to Grover Gardner, who had just started working with Blackstone as studio director. I was just enthusiastic about meeting a narrator I respected and knew of, so I chatted with him until he finally said, “Well, aren’t you going to give me your demo?” I laughed, wondering why this career narrator wanted my demo, and when he explained he was casting I tripped over myself to hand it to him. He kept me employed for well over a year, then recommended me to other publishers, and now I’ve narrated over 100 books and currently have over a dozen publishing clients. I will be eternally grateful to Grover, and I know how blessed I am to have done so much work in such a short time.

AA/JP: What kinds of things do you do to prepare for recording an audiobook?

TG: Prepping for fiction and non-fiction are different. I read everything on an iPad these days, and mark the script, but I do very few markings compared to other narrators, I think. For both fiction and non-fiction I note vocabulary to look up in order to check pronunciations. In fiction I pay close attention to character information, any notes about the character’s vocal quality, and key background information, and then carefully chart all that to review before and during the recording session. I also mark anything the author has written that indicates how a line of dialogue should be delivered.  I do prepare dialects, but that has historically been my weakness, so I’m thrilled to have recently begun working with a dialect coach on my narrations. Alyssa Keene, who was my classmate and friend during our years together at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, has gone on to teach voice and speech at Cornish, as well as coach, act, and sing professionally in Seattle and beyond. She and I are collaborating on dialects, and as things develop, we’ll work on what I am thinking of as “vocal dramaturgy.” Alyssa and I have a working vocabulary and an intuitive understanding because of our common training and background, and I respect her tremendously as a wonderful artist and a very fine coach. Sometimes the dialect work a book demands can be overwhelming – Romanian? Albanian? who knows those? – but more than that, my brain gets pretty muddled when I’m responsible for prepping 150 characters and four books in a month, so not everything I’ve done is awesome. Alyssa is expert, so she’s getting my dialects in great shape. 

AA/JP:  Do you have a favorite narration?

TG: The first audiobook I ever listened to was Other People’s Children, by Joanna Trollope, narrated by Davina Porter. I was driving home to Idaho from Seattle on a break from Cornish. I was a young actor, passionate about the voice training I was getting in school, and when I heard her voice, I was transported. I thought, “I want to DO that!” For that reason, and for the fact that Davina has such a fine mind and spirit, I will always have a great love for her work. Her narrations, particularly her work as Isabel Dalhousie in Alexander McCall Smith’s Sunday Philosophy Club series, are absolutely sublime. I am also completely enamored with Bernard Cribbins’ narrations of the Sophie stories by Dick King-Smith, and they are so perfectly lovely that my heart aches for them. I love Sophie as though she lives in the world. I suppose that’s what great audiobook narrators do – absolutely enliven characters so that they are as real and affecting as flesh and bone.

AA/JP:  Which book so far, has been the most challenging and why?

TG: Hmm. Good question. I’ve done four titles (For the Time Being, The Writing Life, An American Childhood, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) by Annie Dillard, and I think she is the most difficult author I’ve ever narrated. I admire her so much. No – that’s not the right word. It’s not strong enough. Revere, perhaps. She is a sage, beyond any other thinker I’ve narrated except for perhaps Teresa of Avila. They may be on an intellectual par. They both have magnificent minds, and so narrating their work stretches me and demands of me the best of myself – my most open mind and heart, my deepest relaxation, my most focused presence. It’s athletic. I LOVE it. It’s why I am so drawn to audiobooks. Annie Dillard also has an astonishing vocabulary, so her work is always challenging to research.

AA/JP: Is there a review or award/nomination you’ve received that has made you feel the most rewarded and why?

TG: I got my first Earphones Award for Sing Them Home, which is one of my favorite narrations ever. I adore the book, which was written by Stephanie Kallos, who was one of my voice/speech/dialect teachers at Cornish my senior year of college. She and I stayed friends after I graduated and left Seattle. Stevie eventually left teaching to become a full-time novelist, and her first novel, Broken For You, was narrated by Anna Fields (the voice name of Kate Fleming), who was a magnificent narrator and an inspiration. I campaigned for the opportunity to narrate Sing Them Home, Stevie’s second novel, because of my friendship with Stevie, but I did fear that my narration would fall so far below what Kate Fleming’s interpretation would have been. I aspire to have Kate’s clarity, specificity, and characterization, and I wanted to do something that she would have thought was excellent, since she surely would have narrated that title had she not died so tragically. Sing Them Home was very, very difficult, with speaking and singing in Welsh, a great deal of music to sing, multiple dialects, and over 100 characters, including a very young child and a man close to 100 years old. I was doing nine performances a week of Julius Caesar onstage and had a severe shoulder and neck injury throughout the prep and the recording of the book, so receiving an Earphones was extremely meaningful, and I felt it was a thank you to Kate, Stevie, and Grover, too, for their individual roles as my teachers.

AA/JP:  What are you working on right now?

TG: I just got a vampire series, the Roman Brothers Trilogy by Laura Wright, from Tantor. The vampires series by Jeaniene Frost that I’ve voiced for Blackstone is quite popular (though listeners certainly either love them or hate them!), and Laura Wright is a fan of the Cat & Bones books and audiobooks. I’ve spoken with Laura to prep the series, and she is really fun and warm and made me laugh out loud immediately. I always really enjoy connecting with the authors.  I also have an upcoming novel, Bridge to a Distant Star, a memoir, The Dirty Life, a young adult series, The Rayne Series, and I just sent in an audition for a book I really want, a novel within a novel, from a new client I really want to work with, so…we’ll see.

About Production:

AA/JP:  Obviously you have recorded in a professional studio with a director.  How do you feel it compares to using your own studio and having to self-direct?

TG: It’s wonderful to work with a director. I feel a deeper sense of relaxation and freedom because there is someone with his or her ears trained on the performance and eyes trained on the technology. It gives me so much space to just act and play. I enjoy the self-determination that comes from self-directing in my own studio, but it’s certainly not as fun and funny. I think directors are underrated. For the first year plus of my career I hired a director, Stephen McLaughlin, for every project I did, and it was invaluable training and support. I wish that publishers would invest in direction, and that directors would be recognized for their contributions.

AA/JP:  Which do you prefer?

TG: That said, I’m really comfortable working on my own, and I learn and grow from having a singular relationship with the language on the page alone. I think I push myself to go deeper because I know no one else is going to do it for me.

AA/JP:  What do you think are the technical challenges to a home studio for narrators?

TG: It’s not easy to have a soundproof space that is clean and clear and consistent. I work out of a full recording studio where I lease space, because my home so far has not had the right space for a home studio. That may change in the future, but for now I’m lucky to have a wonderful working space. I am not great with the hardware, nor with post-production. But I’m quite a good editor and enjoy ProTools. I’ve learned never to hesitate to contract the assistance of a skilled engineer when I need help.

About You:

AA/JP:  Tell us a little about your returning to school for your Masters at Vermont College of Fine Arts? What prompted the return to Academia?

TG: I want to continually grow and deepen my craft as an artist. Maybe I could dig in and be an audiobook narrator for the next forty years, but I really want to expand my work, to produce, publish, and perform (behind the mic and back on stage). I don’t know what that means yet. But I was motivated by a quiet drive throughout my life to write. It terrifies me, but it’s always there, and I thought it was about time to confront the fear and get to know it. I love studying language and writing.

 

AA/JP:  Do you consider yourself first an actor/narrator or a writer, or are the two synchronistically  linked?

TG: I don’t know what exactly I consider myself. They are certainly linked. I guess I feel like I’m in the process of transforming into a language artist, but I don’t know if I would say that to someone, since it sounds sort of ambiguous. But that’s the truest label I could choose for what I dream of for myself. Right now I feel like a career audiobook narrator and a baby writing student.

AA/JP:  Which one is closest to your heart?

TG: There is no difference between the transcendent startling feeling of being in touch with a creative impulse deeper than my own personality, whether it’s a phrase that I’ve just voiced that St. Teresa wrote five hundred years ago, or the perfect word that I’ve finally found after reaching for it for an hour. Those moments come from one heart.

AA/JP:  Does your writing have any effect on how you approach your narration?

TG: No, but my narration affects my approach to writing. I read such a variety of things, and it gives me an opportunity to think critically about how and what writers write. When I get stuck in my writing, I read it aloud to myself, and all of a sudden I can identify where the pace is off, or what doesn’t feel authentic, or where there are opportunities for humor. Narrating the work of other writers is such a great education; it reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the prose, of the mind of the writer.

AA/JP:  As a writer, do you have other projects in the works (e.g. that unfinished manuscript screaming: finish me!)

TG: My writing is far from being ready for public consumption. I’m writing long-form personal memoir narrative with a concentration on the nature of physical pain and its fusion with mind, spirit, and personality with an emphasis on character, setting, and time, or so I told my graduate program for my mid-semester review. So…there’s that. And I started a series of short chronological essays about my developing relationship with Jesus, which was really funny and sad and odd, and I want to get back to that work. There’s a lot I want to write and perform. Documentary theater, full cast audio dramas, non-fiction about the murder of a friend of mine and the complicated hero in a legal battle….I want to write all day every day, actually. I am passionate about it and still terrified of it.

AA/JP:  Here, I think, is a little known fact, but you innocently opened the door by telling me, so I have to ask: How did you become part of an a cappella Renaissance choir?

TG: Ah! I grew up in Southern Idaho and sang in an a cappella girl’s choir when I was about 13 to 16. When I was 15 we toured England and Scotland and sang in the cathedrals. It was a life-changing trip. I sang in college choirs, first at the University of Washington, and then at Cornish, and when I moved to Portland, Maine, a friend mentioned that she sang with a choir called Renaissance Voices. I auditioned and have been an alto with RV since 2003. I love it. It’s been a weekly part of my life for eight seasons, and it is a consistently joyful and renewing part of my week. Our conductor, Harold Stover, has taught me so much, about leadership, quality, and ever-evolving craftsmanship, as well as making me a better singer each year.

AA/JP:  Do you have a life philosophy you’d like to pass on?

TG: Yes! Comfort will kill you. It’s not always good for you. Be uncomfortable! Talk to people who you wouldn’t normally engage with. Listen. Eat something you’ve never had before. Make eye contact. Take risks – big and small – all the time. Do what scares you most. Just because you’re afraid of something doesn’t mean that should be the dominant part of your decision making. Stretch yourself every day.

AA/JP: And just because it has nothing at all to do with audio books, if I looked in your refrigerator right now, what would I find?

TG: Kale, carrots, celery, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, salmon, olives, eggs, turkey bacon, kimchi, Greek yogurt, strawberries, ricotta, parmesan, a hard cider that’s been unopened since the fall, and undeveloped rolls of film.

AA/JP: Tavia you are a friend, a delight and an insightful guest. I thank you for taking the time to talk with Abbreviated Audio–and me– and I urge anyone who has not heard one of Tavia’s gifted audio performances, to crawl out from under the shade, and get thee to an audiobook!