Explore the Latest Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Arts & Entertainment

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/612786 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Top Billin': Stories of Laughter, Lessons, and Triumph Author: Bill Bellamy Narrator: Bill Bellamy Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 17 minutes Release date: April 25, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: From the MTV trailblazer, stand-up comedian, and actor, a hilariously candid memoir that is an intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt tour through the exclusive, elusive, and eternally iconic world of ’90s pop culture. Imagine 50 Cent’s Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter written by a nerdy Black kid from Newark, New Jersey, who made it big despite the skepticism of his family. That’s Top Billin'. Bill Bellamy is Carlton Banks’s slightly cooler and comedically inclined alter-ego—a guy who went against the grain and left a promising corporate career path to pursue comedy (much to the dismay of his family). Making the leap paid off—in ways Bill never expected. In Top Billin', he looks back at his time at MTV during the ’90s, when the cable music channel was at the epicenter of pop culture. He recounts his legendary interviews with the biggest pop stars—Tupac, Biggie, and Kurt Cobain—making friends with Janet Jackson, and even coining the infamous term “booty call” on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam. During his time at MTV, Bill broke color and class barriers, appearing four times a week on the network’s various programs, including MTV Jamz and MTV Beach House. Top Billin' is an exclusive, all-access backstage pass to Bill’s career and life. It’s all in here—memories, music, and unforgettable moments, including conversations with some of the decade’s legendary artists, the best of the ’90s celebri-tea, nostalgia, and insights on what it meant to be a tastemaker during one of the most exciting and innovative periods in music and American pop culture history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/614339 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Chita: A Memoir Author: Chita Rivera Narrator: Chita Rivera Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 42 minutes Release date: April 25, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: Read by the author The long-awaited and wildly entertaining memoir of the star of stage and screen, the legendary Chita Rivera—three-time Tony Award–winner, Kennedy Centers honoree, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero—until the entertainment world renamed her. But Dolores—the irreverent side of the sensual, dark and ferocious Chita—was always present center stage, and was influential in creating some of Broadway most iconic and acclaimed roles, including Anita in West Side Story‚ the part that made her a star—Rosie in Bye Bye, Birdie, Velma in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Written in gratitude to her longstanding fans and with the hope that new generations may learn from her extraordinary experience, Chita takes us behind the curtain to reveal the highs and lows of one extraordinary showbusiness career—the creative fermentation, the ego clashes, the miraculous discoveries, the exhilaration when it all went right, and the disappointment when it all went wrong. Chita invites us into workrooms and rehearsal studies, on stage and on set as she works with some of the greatest talents of the age, including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, Gwen Verdon, Shirley MacLaine, and many others. We also learn deeply moving, revelatory details about her upbringing and her heritage, and how they indelibly shaped her work and career. This colorful and entertaining memoir—as vital and captivating as Chita herself—is the unforgettable and engrossing personal story of a performer who blazed her own trail and inspired countless performers to forge their own unique path to success.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/611945 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir Author: Lucinda Williams Narrator: Lucinda Williams Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 14 minutes Release date: April 25, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 1 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The iconic singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner opens up about her traumatic childhood in the Deep South, her years of being overlooked in the music industry, and the stories that inspired her enduring songs in this “bracingly candid chronicle” (The Wall Street Journal).   “[Williams’s] memoir transmutes the wisdom, pain, and hard-won joy of her life into stories that stick with you.”—Vogue A WASHINGTON POST AND ROLLING STONE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Lucinda Williams’s rise to fame was anything but easy. Raised in a working-class family in the Deep South, she moved from town to town each time her father—a poet, a textbook salesman, a professor, a lover of parties—got a new job, totaling twelve different places by the time she was eighteen. Her mother suffered from severe mental illness and was in and out of hospitals. And when Williams was about a year old, she had to have an emergency tracheotomy—an inauspicious start for a singing career. But she was also born a fighter, and she would develop a voice that has captivated millions. In Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Williams takes readers through the events that shaped her music—from performing for family friends in her living room to singing at local high schools and colleges in Mexico City, to recording her first album with Folkway Records and headlining a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall. She reveals the inspirations for her unforgettable lyrics, including the doomed love affairs with “poets on motorcycles” and the gothic southern landscapes of the many different towns of her youth, including Macon, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. Williams spent years working at health food stores and record stores during the day so she could play her music at night, and faced record companies who told her that her music was not “finished,” that it was “too country for rock and too rock for country.”  But her fighting spirit persevered, leading to a hard-won success that spans seventeen Grammy nominations and a legacy as one of the greatest and most influential songwriters of our time. Raw, intimate, and honest, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You is an evocative reflection on an extraordinary woman’s life journey.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/617685 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma Author: Claire Dederer Narrator: Claire Dederer Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 14 minutes Release date: April 25, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist? 'A lively, personal exploration of how one might think about the art of those who do bad things' —Vanity Fair • '[Dederer] breaks new ground, making a complex cultural conversation feel brand new.' —Ada Calhoun, author of Also a Poet   From the author of the New York Times best seller Poser and the acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble, Monsters is “part memoir, part treatise, and all treat” (The New York Times). This unflinching, deeply personal book expands on Claire Dederer’s instantly viral Paris Review essay, 'What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?'    Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, or Picasso? Should we? Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss?    Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art. “Monsters leaves us with Dederer’s passionate commitment to the artists whose work most matters to her, and a framework to address these questions about the artists who matter most to us.' —The Washington Post A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vulture, Elle, Esquire, Kirkus

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/614334 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Half of It: A Memoir Author: Madison Beer Narrator: Madison Beer Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 52 minutes Release date: April 25, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.21 of Total 24 Ratings of Narrator: 4.9 of Total 10 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: A memoir from singer-songwriter Madison Beer, chronicling the past decade of her life spent in the spotlight—the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that you won’t see on social media. Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online. Over the past decade, she has navigated the spotlight as a child, through her teenage years, and now as a young woman in her twenties. In The Half of It, Madison pulls back the curtain to show the behind-the-scenes of her journey, from reckoning with mass hate online and the time her private pictures were leaked, to battling suicidal thoughts while making her highly acclaimed debut album, Life Support, and her recovery since then. This memoir is an honest and unflinching account of self-love, mental health, and advocacy from one of the fastest-rising musical voices and most influential social media presences of her generation. It hammers home the point, more striking and urgent than ever, that no matter how close the internet may make us feel to people, we truly don’t know the half of it.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/622340 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Time Come: Selected Prose Author: Linton Kwesi Johnson Narrator: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ben Onwukwe Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 15 minutes Release date: April 13, 2023 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: A Financial Times Music Book of the Year 2023 'Key to understanding black British history' - Sunday Times 'Sharp and still relevant' - Zadie Smith Recognized as one of the great poets of modern times, and as a deeply respected and influential political and cultural activist and social critic, Linton Kwesi Johnson is also a prolific writer of non-fiction. In Time Come, he selects some of his most powerful prose – book and record reviews published in newspapers and magazines, lectures, obituaries and speeches – for the first time. Written over many decades, it is a body of work that draws creatively and critically on Johnson’s own Jamaican roots and on Caribbean history to explore the politics of race that continue to inform the Black British experience. Ranging from reflections on the place of music in Caribbean and Black British culture as a creative, defiant response to oppression, to his penetrating appraisals of music and literature, and including warm tributes paid to the activists and artists who inspired him to find his own voice as a poet and compelled him to contribute to the struggle for racial equality and social justice, Time Come is a panorama of an exceptional life. A collection that ventures into memoir, it underscores Johnson’s enduring importance in Britain’s cultural history and reminds us of his brilliant, unparalleled legacy. With an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack 'A mosaic of wise, urgent and moving pieces' - Kit de Waal 'As necessary as ever' - The Observer 'A book to be savoured and re-read' - Derek Owusu 'An outstanding collection' - Caryl Phillips 'A necessary book from a writer who continues to inspire' - Yomi Sode 'Incisive, engaging, fearless' - Gary Younge

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/617673 to listen full audiobooks. Title: True West: Sam Shepard's Life, Work, and Times Author: Robert Greenfield Narrator: Jon Lindstrom Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 57 minutes Release date: April 11, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A revelatory biography of the world-famous playwright and actor Sam Shepard, whose work was matched by his equally dramatic life, including collaborations with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan as well as tumultuous relationships with Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange “What [True West] achieves in its finest pages is placing the artist in his time. . . . I was filled with excitement, envy and reverence for the New York City that embraced the young Shepard in the 1960s and early ’70s.”—Ethan Hawke, The Washington Post True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work, and Times is the story of an American icon, a lasting portrait of Sam Shepard as he really was, revealed by those who knew him best. This sweeping biography charts Shepard’s long and complicated journey from a small town in Southern California to become an internationally known playwright and movie star. The only son of an alcoholic father, Shepard crafted a public persona as an authentic American archetype: the loner, the cowboy, the drifter, the stranger in a strange land. Despite his great critical and financial success, he seemed, like so many of his characters, to remain perpetually dispossessed. Much like Robert Greenfield’s biographies of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, this book delves deeply into Shepard’s life as well as the ways in which his work illuminates it. True West takes readers through the world of downtown theater in Lower Manhattan in the early sixties; the jazz scene at New York’s Village Gate; fringe theater in London in the seventies; Bob Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder tour; the making of classic films like Zabriskie Point, Days of Heaven, and The Right Stuff; and Broadway productions of Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love. For this definitive biography, Greenfield interviewed dozens of people who knew Shepard well, many of whom had never before spoken on the record about him. While exploring his relationships with Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange across the long arc of his brilliant career, Greenfield makes the case for Shepard as not just a great American writer but a unique figure who first brought the sensibility of rock ’n’ roll to theater.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/604512 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Blanche: The Life and Times of Tennessee Williams's Greatest Creation Author: Nancy Schoenberger Narrator: Elizabeth Wiley Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 55 minutes Release date: April 4, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: A penetrating consideration of Tennessee Williams’s most enduring character—Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire—written by the co-author of The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters and Furious Love. Ever since Jessica Tandy glided onto the stage in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1947, Blanche DuBois has fascinated generations of audiences worldwide and secured a place in the history of literature, theater, and film. One of Williams’s greatest creations, Blanche has bedazzled, amused, and broken the hearts of generations of audiences. Before the Covid pandemic, the stage classic was performed somewhere in the world every hour. It has been adapted into a ballet and an opera, and it was satirized in an episode of The Simpsons. The final twelve words Blanche utters at the play’s end—“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”—have taken on a life of their own. Endlessly fascinating, this indelible figment of one of America’s greatest midcentury playwrights garners nearly universal interest—but why? In Blanche, Nancy Schoenberger searches for the answer. An exploration of the cultural impact of Blanche DuBois, Schoenberger’s absorbing study examines Tennessee Williams's most enduring creation through the performances of seven brilliant actresses who have taken on the role—Jessica Tandy, Vivien Leigh, Ann-Margret, Jessica Lange, Patricia Clarkson, Cate Blanchett, and Jemier Jenkins—as well as the influence of the playwright's tragic sister, Rose Williams, the person he was most haunted and inspired by. In examining various Blanches from throughout the decades and their critical reception, Schoenberger analyzes how our perception and understanding of this mesmerizing figure has altered and deepened over time. Exploring themes of womanhood, sexuality, mental illness, and the idealized South, Blanche is an engrossing cultural history of a rich and complex character that sheds light on who we are.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/603527 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Share My Life: A Journey of Love, Faith and Redemption Author: Kem Narrator: Kem, Keith David Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 30 minutes Release date: April 4, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: Grammy Award–nominated artist Kem shares his life in this “breathtaking” (Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author) and revealing memoir tracing his transformative journey from homelessness to gold-selling artist. Known for his smooth, affecting crooning and dapper style, Kem’s journey to the stage is nothing short of inspiring. In Share My Life, Kem goes back to the very beginning before his time to introduce his grandmother, who worked as a sharecropper in the South and had thirteen children. As Kem’s family rises from the sharecropping and ultimately lands in Detroit, there is an unspoken mantra of “hard things are better left unsaid,” which has devastating consequences down the line. And so, Kem grows up in the midst of an impenetrable silence. His mother is never without a beer in her hand, and his relationship with his father is oddly tense. Emotionally starved, Kem internalizes harmful feelings, eventually spiraling to drug use in his search for relief. At nineteen, Kem is homeless, roaming the cold Detroit streets. In the overly bright AA halls, Kem comes across men like himself verbalizing their feelings. The meetings helped him discover his own voice, using music as an outlet that has since touched millions. In Share My Life, Kem chronicles his “revelatory, moving, and inspirational” (Lisa Cortés, Academy Award–nominated and Emmy Award–winning producer and director) journey of self-discovery. The young boy who struggled with feelings of worthlessness becomes a man willing to put everything on the line for his dream.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/612941 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag Author: Sasha Velour Narrator: Sasha Velour Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 14 minutes Release date: April 4, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: “Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us—the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.” –Sasha Velour This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Sasha Velour illuminates drag as a unique form of expression with a rich history and a revolutionary spirit. Each chapter strips off a new layer, removing one tantalizing glove and then another, to reveal all the twists and turns in the life of a queen. As Sasha recalls her own journey, from the women who raised her, to learning the craft of an artist, to success, disaster, and more, she also uncovers the history of queer life around the world that made it all possible. From shamans to “fairies balls,” empresses to RuPaul’s Drag Race (and beyond), The Big Reveal chronicles and celebrates our shared queer pasts. “If we want to be seen as legendary,” writes Sasha, “we have to weave ourselves into history.” From an iconoclastic drag queen comes an equally singular, thought-provoking manifesto that brings necessary and sparkling substance to our understanding of drag, queerness, beauty, and liberation! Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.