Anything that increases access to the most banned book in the US is a positive step. Coming this year from Listening Library is a full cast audiobook version of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (reviewed here at Broken Frontier). Details, via Oni Press, below.
LISTENING LIBRARY TO PUBLISH A FULL CAST AUDIOBOOK OF THE GROUNDBREAKING MEMOIR GENDER QUEER BY MAIA KOBABE
This spring, Listening Library will release a full-cast audiobook production of GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR (Listening Library, May 7, 2024)– based on Maia Kobabe’s Alex Award-winning graphic memoir published by Oni Press. Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, started this comic to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual. Maia’s acclaimed graphic novel is both an intensely cathartic autobiography that charts eir journey of self-discovery, and a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
Though GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR has been repeatedly cited as the most banned book in the United States in recent years, Kobabe has managed to be a positive and thoughtful advocate both for the human rights of trans and nonbinary people, and an active voice for the freedom of young people to have access to books and information.
Of the audiobook, Kobabe says:
“Audiobooks are my constant companions. I regularly listen to between 20 and 30 audiobooks in a year, and they provide the soundtrack to my drawing, my driving, my chores, and my walks… It was a satisfying creative challenge to adapt such a visual work into audiobook format and I was inspired to write some new material in the process. It was a dream come true to record these words in my own voice, and I hope every reader who loves the print version of the book finds something new to enjoy in the audiobook.”
In addition to Kobabe reading as emself, the full-cast production includes eir sibling Phoebe Kobabe, André Santana, Jeremy Carlisle Parker, and Stephen Graybill. Actress Trini Alvarado, best known for her portrayal of Meg March in 1993’s Little Women, reads the role of Kobabe’s mother.
Version 1.0.0
The audiobook edition of Maia Kobabe’s upcoming graphic novel with Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier, BREATHE: Journeys to Healthy Binding (Listening Library, May 7, 2024), will be published simultaneously by Listening Library.
