Fall 2023 Master Class
In Your Ears: The Written Word with Edoardo Ballerini
The world is listening. From audiobooks to podcasts to long form journalism, the written word is fast becoming the spoken word. How does listening—or recording—affect our understanding of a text? Does audio affect how we approach our own writing? In this class we will explore not only what makes compelling audio, but how audio is changing the way the world is sharing ideas—with help from Edoardo Ballerini, award-winning audiobook narrator and proud Wesleyan alum.
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Edoardo Ballerini
Edoardo Ballerini is a graduate of Wesleyan University. In a 2020 profile, The New York Times called him “a master in his field” of audiobook narration and “at the forefront of a new kind of celebrity.” His 135-hour recording of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series, along with an unabridged recording of The Hebrew Bible, garnered international attention and quickly established Edoardo as one of the most sought after names in audiobook narration.
His list of over 400 titles includes classics by Dante, T.S. Eliot, Dostoevsky, Camus, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Kafka, Jack London, Turgenev, Calvino, Oscar Wilde, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and modern day best-sellers from Cormac McCarthy, Richard Powers, Amor Towles, Jess Walter, Hanya Yanagihara, David Baldacci, Cynthia Ozick, Hernan Diaz, Dean Koontz, Isabel Allende, Thich Nhat Hahn, and The Dalai Lama. He is also a frequent narrator of “Sunday Reads” for The Daily, episodes of the Modern Love Podcast, and “Sleep Stories” for the Calm app. He has been named to "best of" lists in Oprah Daily, Elle Magazine, USA Today, Audible, Slate, Business Insider, Newsday, The A/V Club, and People Magazine. In 2019, Edoardo was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile Magazine, an honorific bestowed to only 40 narrators in the magazine’s 22 year history.
In 2021, Edoardo teamed up with Best-Selling author Jess Walter for his first writing credit. The pair created the Audible Original The Angel of Rome, a fictional tale based on Edoardo's own experience as a young man studying Latin in Italy. The piece was named one of Audible's "Best of 2021." Also that year, he was commissioned by the Estate of T.S. Eliot and Faber & Faber to record the Centenary Edition of the landmark poem, The Waste Land.