Keynote

Thursday Keynote

Julia Whelan

Award-winning Narrator, Founder of Audiobrary

You may remember teenage Julia Whelan for her award winning work as Grace Manning on Once And Again, ABC’s critically-acclaimed series of the early 2000s, from the esteemed duo of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick (Thirtysomething): “Whelan alone is a reason to watch the show,” said The New Yorker; “Whelan is the standout… utterly convincing as a real teenager,” noted the Wall Street Journal. Julia also had leads in the TV movies Fifteen and Pregnant (opposite Kirsten Dunst) and The Secret Life Of Zoey (opposite Mia Farrow), as well as numerous guest starring roles on television shows like NCIS, The Closer, and Castle, to name a few. But that was then, this is now:

Dubbed “The Meryl Streep of Audiobooks” by bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid, “The Adele of Audiobooks” by The New Yorker, and “The Michael Jordan of Audio” by General David H. Petraeus, Julia Whelan is an author, screenwriter, lifelong actor, and acclaimed audiobook narrator of over 600 titles.

She is most recently the recipient of the first-ever Gracie Award for Best Fiction Narrator (presented by the Alliance for Women In Media Foundation), the SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts) Lifetime Achievement Award, and winner of the Audie Award for Best Fiction Narrator of 2025. She also captured both the winner and runner-up slots in the inaugural audiobook category of the Goodreads Choice Awards.

Her performance of her own debut novel, the international bestseller My Oxford Year, which will be released later this year as a Netflix film, garnered a Society of Voice Arts award. Her 2022 novel, Thank You For Listening, was a Best-of-the-Year pick at Amazon, Audible, and NPR as well as a Goodreads Choice Award nominee and winner of the Golden Poppy.

Julia has also applied her talent to voicing longform journalism. As head of production at the start-up Audm (since acquired by the New York Times), she has voiced Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer, Rebecca Traister, Ronan Farrow, and Davis Sedaris, among other well known journalists. Her voice has become a staple for magazines such as Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and more.

She has been the keynote speaker at Nashville’s WriterFest, Adventure by the Book’s Super Book event, and will be the opening keynote at the upcoming CLA (California Library Association) conference this fall. She is a multi-year invited guest at the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival (2024, 2025, and upcoming 2026), a speaker at ALA (American Library Association), and has moderated/performed at multiple conferences and events.

Julia is the founder of Audiobrary, a new audio publishing and distribution company with its own app, which seeks to change how creatives are compensated in the audiobook industry. Her latest books—the Audie nominated duet romance, Casanova LLC, and the annotated Victorian poetry anthology The Poetry Of My Oxford Year—debuted exclusively on Audiobrary.

She is also a Grammy-nominated audiobook director, a former writing tutor, a half-decent amateur baker, and a certified tea sommelier. She lives in California’s Coachella Valley.