| Robin Miles was looking for stage and screen roles when she began reading books for the blind. She’s become one of the country’s most celebrated narrators.  Photograph by Elias Williams for The New Yorker I listened to my very first audiobooks around twenty years ago, usually in my dad’s car, when I was growing up. I didn’t rediscover them in adulthood, however, until the COVID lockdown. Since I couldn’t go out and see people I knew, I made it my daily ritual to put on headphones, walk in the park, and listen to strangers reading books. I became such a devoted fan of the form that meeting the celebrated narrator Robin Miles was like meeting the lead singer of a favorite band. We were speaking for the first time, but I already knew her voice. Miles has been narrating since the nineties, when audiobooks were a cottage industry, and she is part of a generation of voice actors who helped to turn a niche format into an art form. Listening to her record in the tiny soundproof closet that serves as her studio, I was amazed by the diversity of characters and accents that she could conjure up, from the old sheep in “Charlotte’s Web” to a distraught blue crayon in “Red: A Crayon’s Story.” She has been the voice of N. K. Jemisin, Jamaica Kincaid, and Kamala Harris, among many others. Audiobooks seem to satisfy the same urge that compels children to demand bedtime stories. Human voices comfort and transport us; they keep us company while we try to fall asleep. The voices might not always be human, though. Artificial intelligence is generating increasingly convincing synthetic voices, and many narrators fear for their jobs. While writing about Miles, I kept wondering: Would audiobook lovers put up with A.I. renditions of their favorite books, or are they looking for a performance that actually speaks to them? —Daniel A. Gross, story editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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