Beata Pozniak

What was the first audiobook you performed?

“The Winter Palace – A Novel of Catherine the Great” by Eva Stachniak, Penguin Random House (19 h)

What title or series are you best known for?

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

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

The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Where else have we heard your voice?

Voicing Skarlet, the Blood Queen—a deliciously bloodthirsty fighter opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in Mortal Kombat 11. To my surprise, being so bad was very good to me: the role won me a prestigious Voice Arts Award.

What do you always have in the booth?

Organic cinnamon powder mixed with New Zealand Manuka honey into a paste – and tongue twisters. My microphone has learned not to ask questions.

How did you come to performing audiobooks?

Audiobooks found me. More than a decade ago, voices like mine—English as a second language—weren’t expected to narrate books in English. Most narrators you heard spoke standard American or British English. I never imagined that world would have a place for me.

Then, out of the blue, I received an email from Random House asking me to narrate a novel about Catherine the Great. I honestly thought it was a joke!

It wasn’t. I said yes—and that unexpected invitation opened an entirely new chapter in my life and a world I hadn’t imagined was open to me.

Anything else you’d like a listener to know?

One of my greatest joys has been bringing forgotten women writers back into the conversation. Kate Sanborn published Adopting an Abandoned Farm in 1891. More than a century later, I produced and narrated its first audiobook—giving her words a voice for the first time.

As an immigrant to the United States, I find something especially meaningful in giving voice to great American women whose words have been forgotten. To me, that is one of the beautiful possibilities of this medium: our voices don’t have to be limited by where we were born. We can cross borders, generations and centuries.