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. He is a member of the World Dementia Council. He and UsAgainstAlzheimer’s co-convene both the Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer’s Disease (LEAD) Coalition and the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease. With his wife Trish (1946–2017), George has long been a dedicated member of Washington’s civic and philanthropic community. George served as chairman of The Phillips Collection for thirteen years and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of Washington. He has served in senior executive and legal positions at CBS, FOX and AOL/Time Warner. George and Trish published TikkunMagazine for ten years.

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 began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto... with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.

Adenrele Ojo is an experienced audiobook narrator and actor. A self-described theater brat, she spent many late nights as a young child falling asleep on theatre chairs as her dad directed and her mother performed. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Philadelphia, she received her bachelor of arts in theater from Hunter College in New York.

Pam Ward has had many incarnations, 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. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.

Ann Richardson is an award-winning narrator. With a background of drama and music prevalent in her Midwestern upbringing, she delights in narrating fiction and portraying characters with a variety of accents, including Scandinavian and Southern U.S. Being of Swedish heritage is an important facet of Ann's life, as her father was a Swedish immigrant, and she travels to Sweden every few years to spend time with family and brush up on speaking the language. In her spare time Ann is a volunteer narrator for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), and also enjoys sculpting, painting, long-distance running, and hanging out with her family in Northern California.

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 has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott; My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte; The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator; and Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B Dubois. In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Other roles include Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI Parts 2 & 3, and A Raisin in the Sun with the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed as guest narrator with the Houston Symphony. Film and TV guest appearances include Criminal Minds, Private Practice, The Exes, Monk, 24, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Parkers, Living Single, E.R., Star Trek, and Independence Day, among others. Mirron resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.

Robin Miles is a veteran of Broadway, classical plays, television, film, and audiobooks. An AudioFile Golden Voice, she has won numerous Earphones Awards, ALA Awards, and Audie Award nominations.

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 is a graduate of the acting program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Based in Atlanta, she voices webinars, eLearning, and audiobooks in a variety of genres, including drama, romance, nonfiction, and mysteries.

Hillary Huber is a multiple Audie Award finalist, an Earphones Award winner, and an AudioFile Best Voice. She has recorded over six hundred titles spanning many genres and holds a bachelor's degree in English literature. A voracious reader and listener, she was raised in Connecticut and Hawaii but now splits her time between California and New York.

Nancy Wu has done voice-over animation and narrated audiobooks since 2004. A New York theater, TV, and film actor, she has won multiple Library Journal and AudioFile Earphones Awards, and recorded in studios all over the world-from Italy to Switzerland to Thailand. Narrating across genres, she is known for varied character voices and bringing stories vividly to life. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now makes her home in Boulder, Colorado, as an avid yoga practitioner and rock climber. Her television/film credits include the Law & Order franchise, All My Children, the Oscar-nominated film Frozen River, and the Nickelodeon series Three Delivery. She studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City and holds a master's degree in human rights.

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 is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and currently writes what she refers to as 'grit lit' - Southern women's fiction - and has also expanded her horizons into writing a mystery series set in Charleston, South Carolina.When not writing, she spends her time reading, scrapbooking, playing piano, and avoiding cooking. She currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and two children, and two spoiled Havanese dogs.

Neil Shah is an Audie Award-nominated narrator and voiceover artist who has recorded numerous audiobooks, including I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais, and Stringer: A Reporter's Journey In the Congo by Anjan Sundaram. He is a classically trained actor with an MFA from the Old Globe/University of San Diego program and has appeared on off-Broadway and regional stages, as well as in film and television. Neil currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

Erica Sullivan is a professional actress of both stage and screen and holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Currently a company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she has performed in New York and regionally with such companies as the Lincoln Center, Soho Repertory Theatre, and New Dramatists. She makes her home in Ashland, Oregon, with her family.