Pushkin Industries announces The Best of Audio Storytelling: 2022 with a foreword from David Sedaris

Pushkin Industries is excited to announce the upcoming release of THE BEST AUDIO STORYTELLING: 2022 (April 18, 2023; Pushkin Industries), an audio collection that gathers the best and most innovative English-language podcast episodes and radio stories of the past year. This first-of-its-kind celebration is curated by longtime audio story editor Julia Barton. Barton is known for her award-winning work on Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History and Michael Lewis’s Against the Rules, as well as groundbreaking pieces for 99% Invisible, Radiolab, and BBC Radio 4. This audio compendium guides listeners through a robust selection of 2022’s most powerful nonfiction audio stories, highlighting the unique range and creative challenges of the form. The final selections for the audiobook will be announced in April. 

Featuring a foreword from bestselling author and devoted audio fan David Sedaris, THE BEST OF AUDIO STORYTELLING looks to honor and recognize audio stories in the vein of anthologies of essays and short stories. In curating the final selections, editor Julia Barton brings an extensive knowledge of writing for the ear and an insider appreciation for production to illuminate and demystify how audio storytelling works.

“A decade after podcast listening first started becoming a widespread habit, it’s time to celebrate the huge range and expansion of audio storytelling. This collection is a way to highlight just some of the narratives that I couldn’t stop thinking about after I heard them,” says Barton.

 “With so many great podcasts and audiobooks being released every year it’s becoming harder for people outside the industry to discover what’s best,” says Brendan Francis-Newnam, VP, Special Audio Projects. “This new audiobook series is our attempt to do for audio nonfiction what ‘Best Of’ print compendiums have been doing successfully for years.”

THE BEST OF AUDIO STORYTELLING will add to Pushkin’s growing list of audiobooks including last year’s Inside Voice by Lake Bell, this year’s Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology, and the Future of Life by Michael Specter, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, which was recently nominated in the Audiobook of the Year category in this year’s Audie Awards hosted by the Audio Publishers Association.

ABOUT JULIA BARTON

Julia Barton is the executive editor of Pushkin Industries, following a long career in public radio. She helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules, among other chart-topping shows. She’s the editor of Malcolm Gladwell’s audiobook The Bomber Mafia, Michael Specter’s Fauci, and Michael Lewis’s unabridged Liar’s Poker and companion podcast. Her 2019 series for PRX’s Radiotopia, Spacebridge, was called “dazzling” by The New Yorker.

ABOUT DAVID SEDARIS

With sardonic wit and incisive social critiques, David Sedaris has become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. The great skill with which he slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that Sedaris is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today. David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk and Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 as well as collections of personal essays, Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, Calypso and The Best of Me. His latest book is Happy-Go-Lucky. He lives in the UK, and is a contributor to the New Yorker, the BBC and CBS Sunday Morning.