Meet Voice Actor/Narrator/Storyteller Nina Price--And How She Discovered Audio Books

Nina has narrated several of my books, and is working on more, my romantic comedy time travel FOR LOVE AND LOYALTY with a variety of British accents (she's nailing the Yorkshire accent). Her voice is expressive and animated, and her accents include German, French, Australian, New York, Scottish, and several regional British accents. She has an impeccable sense of comedic timing and sarcasm. She really makes my characters come to life--the fictional ones I made up, and the historical figures who really lived!

Nina's Story:

How I Came to Narrate the Audio Versions of Diana Rubino’s New York Saga Books

I’m Nina Price and I thoroughly enjoyed reading and narrating all three of Diana Rubino’s New York Saga books: From Here to Fourteenth Street, Bootleg Broadway and The End of Camelot. The characters are delightful and the stories compelling. In fact I enjoyed Diana’s books so much that I offered to do another one: For Love and Loyalty, which should be available by next fall.

Diana thought her readers would enjoy knowing more about me. So here’s a bit of the story about how I became an audiobook narrator.

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH “AUDIOBOOKS” - THE SINGING LADY

As a child growing up in New York many of the adults in my family read stories to me, but my first experience of someone reading me a story and creating special voices for all of the characters, was when I listened to Ireene Wicker, The Singing Lady on WNYC radio. Like millions of children before me, I was enchanted by The Singing Lady and her stories. Most of all, I loved her voices. At the time, I never thought that I could or would tell stories with voices, but apparently a seed was planted.

I Started Each Day in College with 30 Minutes of an Audiobook  (Even though they weren’t called “audiobooks” in those days)

I studied music as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I’m fond of telling people that when I graduated from high school, even though most kids received a typewriter for a high school graduation gift, my Dad gave me a radio. I had to borrow a typewriter each week to write a paper for my Freshman English class, and I listened to my radio each morning as I began my day.

East Lansing, MI the home of Michigan State University was also home to WKAR radio where Dick Estell, The Radio Reader read 30 minutes of fiction each morning to me through my beloved radio. Dick Estell didn’t really create voices for his characters but I loved his readings and never missed an installment, except when I was out of range.

UNBEDTIME STORIES – My Own Foray into Radio Storytelling

I never started out to be like Dick Estell, or Ireene Wicker, but in fact the Unbedtime Stories segment of my radio show Dancin’ in the Fast Lane with Ann Arbor premiered along with the show in April of 1993. My radio show was, and still is a music show on KFJC 89.7 FM kfjc.org in the San Francisco Bay Area each Wednesday morning from 6 to 10 am. I added the Unbedtime Stories segment to my show because I wanted to learn to cold read – to be able to pick up a script and just read it cold.

Dick Estell

Unbedtime Stories featured up-and-coming works by up-and-coming authors read by me. Later it included writers who participated in NANOWRIMO, National Novel Writing Month – which one of my listeners introduced me to, and which debuted in the San Francisco Bay Area. For twenty years I read (or hosted) Unbedtime Stories.

Then audiobooks came along. Since I had read stories on the radio for years, I figured I should narrate audiobooks. In December of 2015 I got started and I’ve been going strong ever since. To date I’ve produced about 40 books for Audible.

Nina Price narrates audiobooks, and is a Licensed Acupuncturist and Master Herbalist in Palo Alto, CA.  Ann Arbor continues to host Dancin’ in the Fast Lane each Wednesday morning (kfjc.org) 

Find out more about Nina and her audiobooks -- click on: her new website.  

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