Journeys Home: Inspiring Stories, plus Tips and Strategies to Find Your Family History

Andrew McCarthy is the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Brat: An ‘80s Story. He is an award winning travel writer and served for a dozen years as an editor-at-larger at National Geographic Traveler magazine. Best known as an actor for the past four decades, he has appeared in such iconic films as Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero.

Joyce Maynard is the author of nine previous novels and five books of nonfiction, as well as the syndicated column, “Domestic Affairs.” Her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, has been translated into sixteen languages. Her novels To Die For and Labor Day were both adapted for film. Maynard currently makes her home in New Haven, Connecticut.

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His journalism has appeared in Time, the New York Times, New York Review of Books, the London Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.

Diane Johnson is an American-born novelist and essayist. A two-time finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in three different genres—essay, biography, and fiction—she is the author of a dozen novels, including Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L’Affaire. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and splits her time between San Francisco and Paris.

Spencer Wells is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and the director of the Genographic Project. After studying under genetic pioneer Luigi Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford University, Wells began an unusual career that mixes science, writing, and filmmaking. His acclaimed first book, The Journey of Man, combined his own DNA research with the work of archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleoclimatologists, and linguists to show how modern humans came to populate the planet. He is also the author of Deep Ancestry.

Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.

Patrick Lawlor is an accomplished audiobook narrator, stage actor, director, and combat choreographer. The recipient of an AudioFile Earphones Award, he was also a finalist for an Audie Award.

Adam Verner is a full-time narrator who has recorded over 250 audiobook titles. The recipient of multiple Earphones awards, including for Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck, he has also been nominated for Voice Arts Awards by the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences. He holds an MFA in Acting from the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Born and raised in Southampton, England, Shaun Grindell is an accomplished actor who trained at the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Actors Institute in London. As an audiobook narrator, he has narrated many titles in different genres. Among his most notable works are the Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M. C. Beaton. Shaun also garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award for his reading of The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson.

Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.

Bernadette Dunne has been honored to narrate the work of some of the finest fiction and nonfiction writers of our time, including Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sandra Day O'Connor. The winner of more than a dozen Earphones Awards and a three-time Audie Award nominee, she has voiced countless bestsellers, including Memoirs of a Geisha, The Devil Wears Prada, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She studied at The Royal National Theater and lives in New York.

Carrington MacDuffie is a recording artist, writer, and voice actor who has narrated over 100 audiobooks and received numerous AudioFile Earphones awards and six Audie finalists. Her original audiobook of poetry and music, Many Things Invisible, was nominated for an Audie in two categories.

Amy Rubinate has narrated over 250 audiobooks and has won multiple Earphones Awards. She has a degree in the oral interpretation of literature, and she has won several state and national awards for poetry reading. A voice actor and singer for over a decade, she has also narrated many children's books and provided character voices for toys and video games.

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

John McLain is an award-winning storyteller with over 200 audiobook credits. He delights in narrating across many genres: detective noir, suspense and thrillers, westerns, nonfiction, biography, and more. John is a SOVAS Voice Arts Award winner, a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and a winner of the Audiobook Reviewer Listeners' Choice Award.

Tom Bromhead is a uniquely international voice artist. He now lives in Los Angeles, but having grown up in Australia and England, as well as being a musician, has given him an ear for accents and characters. He has appeared in commercials with Jane Lynch and Mena Suvari and performed voices for animation and video games, including Skylanders, Transformers, and Call of Duty. Tom performed as a stand-up comedian, traveling as far afield as Kuala Lumpur, Darwin, and London. He studied at Richmond Drama School in London and Second City in Los Angeles.

Mark Peckham is an actor and director based in Rhode Island. In addition to working with Trinity Rep, Virginia Stage Co., and many Boston-area theaters, he was the voice of Joseph Smith in the award-winning PBS documentary American Prophet with Gregory Peck.

Simon Vance, a former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader, is a full-time actor who has appeared on both stage and television. He has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has earned fifty-seven Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. A multiple Audie finalist, Simon has won Audie Awards for The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Winner of the 2008 Booklist Voice of Choice Award, Simon has also been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Arthur Morey has recorded countless audiobooks, including titles by such authors as M. Scott Peck, John Updike, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and John Irving. He attended Harvard and the University of Chicago and has taught performance and writing at Fordham, Northwestern, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Arthur has appeared in a host of off-Broadway and off-Loop productions. He has won three AudioFile Magazine 'Best Of' Awards: in 2011 for BIOGRAPHY & HISTORY, in for History & Historical Fiction, and in 2009 for Nonfiction & Culture. His work has also garnered multiple AudioFile Earphones awards, and he has been nominated for an Audie Award.

Stephen R. Thorne is a professional actor and a member of the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad, among many other roles. Stephen has narrated over fifty audiobooks.

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.

Audiobook veteran Michael Kramer has recorded more than two hundred audiobooks for trade publishers and many more for the Library of Congress Talking Books program. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner and an Audie Award nominee, he earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award for his reading of Savages by Don Winslow.

Angela Brazil is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator and a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory.

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.

Mia Chiaromonte is a Southern California native with a BA in theater from the University of California, San Diego. She has worked extensively as an actor, singer, and audiobook narrator, and her voice has been heard across the country on various radio commercials for clients including BMW and Time Warner Cable.

Kate Reading is the recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been named by AudioFile magazine as a “Voice of the Century,” as well as the Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy in 2008 and 2009 and Best Voice in Biography & Culture in 2010. She has narrated works by such authors as Jane Austen, Robert Jordan, Edith Wharton, and Sophie Kinsella. Reading has performed at numerous theaters in Washington D.C. and received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in Aunt Dan and Lemon. AudioFile magazine reports that, "With subtle control of characters and sense of pacing, Kate’s performances are a consistent pleasure."

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.

Christine Williams is a singer and actor based in Ashland, Oregon. Her performance credits include productions at regional theaters and on concert stages across the country and around the world, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Barbican Centre in London to the Aspen Music Festival and the Grotowski Institute in Poland.

Melanie Ewbank has performed in numerous film and regional theater productions. She also appeared on the Lifetime television series Strong Medicine.

Bob Souer is a full-time professional storyteller and narrator. He has narrated numerous audiobooks, as well as broadcast and nonbroadcast projects for corporations and ministries across North America. You've heard Bob's voice on CBS, PBS, the History Channel, the Military Channel, Audible.com, iTunes, and many other networks and sites. Bob is married to Cinda. They have four children and live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Narrator Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flare for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013. Her natural, mellifluous style reveals her rich alto training, love of storytelling, and ease in front of a microphone. Though a longtime New Englander, Rebecca Mitchell was born and raised in the Midwest. The myriad accents and dialects from her various homes, as well as those from her extensive travels, find their way into the characters she portrays. A collector of personality traits, idiosyncrasies, vocal styles, and personal histories, Rebecca infuses her narration with such elements, deepening the richness of her work.

Pam Ward has had many incarnations, including private detective, classical musician, television talk-show host, and actress, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, her many audiobooks include Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich, Breaking Free by Lauraine Snelling, The Second Journey by Joan Anderson, and Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.