The 2026 Audie Awards have celebrated a year of outstanding audiobook storytelling, with Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping taking the evening’s top honor: Audiobook of the Year.
The Audio Publishers Association presented the 31st annual Audie Awards on March 2 in New York City, recognizing excellence across 27 categories in audiobooks and spoken entertainment. Collins’ Hunger Games prequel was narrated by Jefferson White and published by Scholastic Audio.
The awards also highlighted the range of memoir and nonfiction in audio. Tina Knowles’ Matriarch won the Autobiography/Memoir category, with Knowles joined in narration by Beyoncé, Solange, Kelly Rowland, and Angie Beyincé. The finalists included Cher: Part One, Code Name: Pale Horse, The Heart of a Woman, and Nobody’s Girl.
For memoir lovers, the result matters. An audiobook is no longer a spoken version of a printed book; performance, voice, casting, and production can shape how a life story reaches its audience.
The winners offer titles eagerly to explore, while underlining something important for Memoir in Audio: the voice behind a personal story can matter as much as the story itself. The full list of winners is available from the Audio Publishers Association.
