Eunice Wong

What was the first audiobook you performed?

American Fascists by Chris Hedges.

What title or series are you best known for?

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto.

If a listener wanted to get to know your work, which of your audiobooks would you point them to?

888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers by Abraham Chang
Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su

Where else have we heard your voice?

Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center — How Can You Forget Me?
Victoria Moran Podcast: Meetings with Remarkable Women — Audible Insights with Eunice Wong
Shakespeare’s Shadows — Pericles

What do you always have in the booth?

A crocheted R2-D2.

How did you come to performing audiobooks?

There are three beginnings to my audiobook career:

1) 2007. Nepotism. My husband hired me to record his book, American Fascists, for Tantor. This was my only audiobook for 8 years.

2) 2014. Juilliard alumni workshop with Audible. I auditioned for Audible and did a handful of titles with them over five years.

3) 2020. Covid. The pandemic shut down theaters and I actively began training in and seeking audiobook work. I worked with wonderful independent authors for a year and then with publishers like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, developing relationships that are the basis of my career today.

Anything else you’d like a listener to know?

Audiobooks are acting. They’re an acting gig, like theater and film. And audiobooks are the hardest form of acting I’ve ever done. Harder than Shakespeare, harder than the world premiere of a play when you’re getting rewrites during the day to perform that night in previews. Because you have no rehearsal for audiobooks, and you’re never off-book. Yet you have to make the listener believe that you’re experiencing these thoughts and feelings for the first time as you speak them. The job is not to read the words. Anyone who can read, including AI, can do that. The true job in audiobooks is to transport the listener.