Marisa Calin: Audiobook Narrator
Featuring Marisa Calin: Audiobook Narrator
Bio:
Marisa is an actress, screenwriter and novelist. She grew up in Bath, England, trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and is an Audie, Odyssey and Audiofile Earphones Award winning narrator.
She wrote and produced her first feature, A Million Happy Nows, with her company, Perfect Features, which went on to win nineteen awards on the festival circuit, including Best First Feature at Outfest.
Her debut novel for Young Adults, Between You & Me, – a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2012 and recipient of a Kirkus star for books of exceptional merit – was published by Bloomsbury in 2012. Between You & Me was also selected for the American Library Associations’ 2013 Rainbow Book List and as a Kobo dazzling debut.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
How did you prepare to narrate Who Rescued Who by Victoria Schade?
I love to find the naturalism in prose if the style lends itself to that, especially if it’s a book told in the first person. I want the listener to hear the character thinking and discovering along with them. My favorite narratives tend to be streams of consciousness, so I start by getting a sense of the voice of the book, and look for the features in the text that have those naturalistic rhythms - new thoughts, realizations, observations. To me, the narrative can have as much discovery as the dialogue. Using pace, volume and cadence is a big part of interpreting the author’s intent in their word choices. I make few notes in the text, but with one detailed pre-read, I try to memorize the beats so that I always know what’s coming next and can shape the arc of the story.
I highlight every character’s dialogue with a different color to know at a glance who’s talking. We’re trying to live every character, so each scene is a vector of voices and personalities to keep track of as we keep the impetus of the scene moving forward.
Finally, I take a total emersion approach to a book. That was less needful with Who Rescued Who, which isn’t so far from my own world, but most of my books involve a lot of dialects so I surround myself with those, and with influences that contribute to the vibe of the book. I watch documentaries and films with a similar setting every night throughout recording and infuse my mind with tonally similar timeframes and settings as much as possible.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
What are your top three books that you’ve narrated?
I’ve been blessed, because of my British accent and a love of dialects, with some wonderful historical fiction, which I adore. My most recent book for Harper is one of those treasures. Daughter of the Reich by Louise Fein, which comes out in May, is a wonderful example of a beautifully rendered character arc and a riveting journey for a performer. We meet Hetty as a child - the daughter of a high ranking Nazi officer, successfully indoctrinated in the ideology of Aryan supremacy, because as children we believe what we’re told. The book is the wonderful journey of her own reckoning as she falls in love for the first time and starts to ask the necessary questions.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
To stick with a theme, House of Gold by Natasha Solomons from Penguin Random House, is another of those books that I lived and breathed. We’re pre-World War I and this time it’s the early rumblings of anti-semitism that cause an Austrian heiress to have to make an advantageous political marriage in a changing world on the cusp of War.
These are such rich periods in human history to delve into, and yet they are all too timely and enduring.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
The third book I’ll highlight is Alice by Heart, by Steven Sater, because of its stunningly intricate lyrical prose which has been my biggest challenge in the booth to date. Based on the Off-Broadway musical, this adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, set in the London Underground during the Blitz, is a fresh take on down-the-rabbit-hole escapism as Alice is forced to grow up heartbreakingly quickly. My excitement about this challenge was helping Steven’s very carefully constructed prose leap off the page in its both fantastical and naturalistic stream-of-consciousness nature. It’s both a dream and Alice’s innermost thoughts and fears. I loved it.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
Examples of other work you've done?
I’m a writer as well as an actor - audiobooks being the perfect marriage of the two. My first novel, Between You & Me, was a medium that appealed because books are world building at its purest, with the fewest phases of interpretation. The sky is the limit and the creative process was mine to sculpt.
That readied me for the volume of collaboration that is film. My film, A Million Happy Nows, available to stream everywhere now, was released in 2017. There are so many layers of interpretation with actors, designers, a director and editor, that a script is really just a blueprint, which is so exciting in a different way as you watch it come to life.
I’m currently writing a full cast Audio play. Audio is such a rich and ever-expanding medium with so much potential. Performing books is the best job in the world, and playing all the characters is a unique, fun-filled challenge. Writing an Audio play goes one step further, and allows actors the rare scope of being across from their scene partners in a studio to bring a scene to life together. Radio plays have always been on the air, but with the advent of podcasts and audiobooks constantly at our fingertips, this is an exciting space to write for.
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
More places to find Marisa Calin:
twitter: @marisacalin
instagram: @marisacalin
website: marisacalin.com
Let's Hear it for the Audiobook Narrators: Featuring Marisa Calin
