By: Bella Liu
Julia Whelan, who is one of the most popular audiobook narrators, has narrated more than 400 audiobooks, including Gillian Flynn’s thriller Gone Girl, Tara Westover’s memoir Educated, and Whelan’s own new novel, Thank You for Listening.
Whelan grew up in Salem, Oregon. Her father was a firefighter who served in the Oregon House of Representatives and her mother was a homemaker; however, they divorced when Whelan was just a teenager. Whelan loved to read, and she indulged herself in stories. She started acting in small theater productions at a very young age. She auditioned for Once and Again in 1999 and got the role. While she was acting, she was homeschooled and tutored, but after the show ended, Whelan attended Middlebury College and later, Oxford University. Upon returning home from Oxford, she went to several auditions, but to no avail.
After several years of acting, Whelan began a career in audio narration when an audio producer offered her a job at her Middlebury College graduation ceremony. She became successful after her narration of The Witness by Nora Roberts and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and she decided to pursue narrating instead of acting since her acting career had not been very successful. During this time, Whelan fell in love with Geof Prysirr, who was her acting coach when she was young; they married in 2018. Her latest work is an autobiographical novel about a former actress who becomes a successful audiobook narrator after a devastating accident (this plot twist is presumably not autobiographical). In Whelan’s book, the heroine goes on an emotional journey during which she finds self-love and self-acceptance. Whelan says, “It wasn’t until I got into the recording process that I realized just how meta the whole thing is.”
When Whelan narrates a book, she first reads the book a few times and then decides which tone to use for certain parts and which sections she wants to emphasize. Her own book, Thank You for Listening, allowed her to use both her writing skills and her vast experience as an audiobook narrator.