SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. —Local Tahoe author Suzanne Roberts is off to New York City for the Audie Awards ceremony and gala, where her audiobook Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties, performed by Julia Whelan, is a finalist for an Audies Award in the Short Stories/Collection category. The book is joined by other finalists Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, Alton Brown from Iron Chef, an anthology of today’s best thriller writers, including Frieda McFadden, and a collection of short stories based on Stephen King’s “The Stand.”
Audies is the premier awards program (the Oscars for audiobooks) in the United States recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Finalists are selected, and from that group of finalists, one winner will be announced in New York City on March 2, 2026.
“I’m honored my book is among such distinguished company,” said Suzanne Roberts. “Julia Whelan did an amazing job narrating my book; she really brought my essays to life. I’m excited to get dressed up and go to the gala—it will be quite a change from my usual messy mountain-girl attire.”
In Animal Bodies, Suzanne Roberts explores the link between death and desire and what it means to accept our own animal natures, the parts we most often hide, deny, or consider only with shame—our taboo desires and our grief. In landscapes as diverse as the Salamanca’s cobbled streets, the Mekong River’s floating markets, Fire Island’s windswept beaches, Nashville’s honky-tonks, and the Sierra Nevada’s snowy slopes, Roberts interrogates her memory and tries to make sense of her own private losses (deaths of people and relationships), as well as more public losses, including a mass shooting in her hometown, environmental devastation in the Amazon rainforest, and wildfire evacuations.
With lyricism, insight, honesty, and dark humor, these essays illuminate the sometimes terrible beauty of what it means to be human, deepening the conversation on death and grief, sexuality, and the shame that comes from surviving the world in a female body with all of its complexities.
According to Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water, “No one travels the depths of place and experience more phenomenally than Suzanne Roberts. In these essays that explore being, beauty, desire, death, and our collective animal journeys on the planet, Animal Bodies gathers our questions about life and brings them to the only place where meaning might emerge: adaptation. This book is a triumph that transcends human and gives us a chance to re-story ourselves into the larger world.”
The audiobook of Animal Bodies was acquired by Audiobrary and performed by Julia Whelan, dubbed “The Meryl Streep of Audiobooks” by bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid and “The Adele of Audiobooks” by The New Yorker. Julia Whelan is an author, screenwriter, lifelong actor, and acclaimed audiobook narrator of over 700 titles and is the recipient of Spotify’s Narrator of the Year Award (the most listened-to narrator globally), winner of the Audie Award for Best Fiction Narrator of 2025, and 2026 inductee of the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. She also captured both the winner and runner-up slots in the inaugural audiobook category of the Goodreads Choice Awards.
To learn more about the 2026 finalists visit https://www.audiopub.org/audies-finalists-2026-pr.
