Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording

The Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album has been awarded since 1959. The award has had several minor name changes:

• In 1959 the award was known as Best Performance, Documentary or Spoken Word
• From 1960 to 1961 it was awarded as Best Performance – Documentary or Spoken Word (other than comedy)
• From 1962 to 1963 it was awarded as Best Documentary or Spoken Word Recording (other than comedy)
• From 1964 to 1965 it was awarded as Best Documentary, Spoken Word or Drama Recording (other than comedy)
• In 1966 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Drama Recording
• From 1967 to 1968 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording
• From 1969 to 1979 it was awarded as **Best Spoken Word Recording **
• From 1980 to 1983 it returned to the title of Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording
• From 1984 to 1991 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording
• From 1992 to 1997 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album
• From 1998 to 2022 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word Album. In 2020, spoken-word children's albums were moved here from the Best Children's Album category.
• From 2023 it has been awarded as ** Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording**. Poetry reading now has its own Grammy category, Best Spoken Word Poetry Album.

Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, for a recording released in the previous year.

Recipients

1950s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	1959
Stan Freberg	The Best of the Stan Freberg Shows
Melvyn Douglas, Vincent Price, Carl Sandburg, & Ed Begley	Great American Speeches
Stan Freberg	Green Christmas
Elaine May & Mike Nichols	Improvisations to Music

1960s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	1960	1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966	1967	1968
1969
Carl Sandburg	A Lincoln Portrait
John Gielgud	Ages of Man
Hal Holbrook	Mark Twain Tonight
Basil Rathbone	Basil Rathbone Reads Sherlock Holmes
Tony Schwartz	New York Taxi Driver
Robert Bialek (producer)	FDR Speaks
Henry Fonda	Voices of the Twentieth Century
John Gielgud	Ages of Man, Vol. 2 (One Man in His Time)
Archibald MacLeish	J.B.
Leonard Bernstein	Humor in Music
Hal Holbrook	More of Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight!
Dorothy Parker	The World of Dorothy Parker
Carl Sandburg, Harlow Shapley, Jawaharlal Nehru & Jacques Lipchitz	Wisdom, Vol. 1
Alexander Scourby	The Coming of Christ
Charles Laughton	The Story-Teller ... A Session with Charles Laughton
Carl Sandburg	Carl Sandburg Reading His Poetry
Claude Rains & Glenn Gould	Enoch Arden
Laurence Harvey	This Is My Beloved
Stan Kenton	Mama Sang a Song
Melinda Dillon, George Grizzard, Uta Hagen & Arthur Hill	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Dane Clark, Anne Jackson, Lotte Lenya & Viveca Lindfors	Brecht on Brecht
Martin Luther King Jr. with Joan Baez, Marian Anderson, Odetta, Rabbi Joachim Prinz & Bob Dylan	We Shall Overcome (The March on Washington, August 28, 1963)
Goddard Lieberson, Pete Seeger, & others	The Badmen
Norman Weiser & David Teig	John F. Kennedy – The Presidential Years
That Was the Week That Was Cast	BBC Tribute to John F. Kennedy
Laurence Olivier	Othello
Richard Burton, Hume Cronyn, John Gielgud, Alfred Drake, George Voskovec, Eileen Herlie, William Redfield & George Ross	Hamlet
Richard Burton & Peter O'Toole	Dialogue Highlights from Becket
Alec Guinness & Kate Reid	Dylan
John F. Kennedy, David Brinkley & Adlai Stevenson	The Kennedy Wit
Goddard Lieberson, producer	John F. Kennedy: As We Remember Him
Alec Guinness	A Personal Choice
Chet Huntley & David Brinkley	A Time to Keep: '64
National Theatre of Great Britain	Much Ado About Nothing
Adlai Stevenson	The Voice of the Uncommon Man
Margaret Webster	The Brontes
Edward R. Murrow	A Reporter Remembers, Vol. I – The War Years
Lee J. Cobb & Mildred Dunnock	Death of a Salesman
Johnny Sea	Day for Decision
Buddy Starcher	History Repeats Itself
Everett Dirksen	Gallant Men
James Dickey	Poems of James Dickey
Hal Holbrook	Mark Twain Tonight, Vol. 3
Patrick Magee & Cyril Cusack	The Balcony
Rod McKuen	The Earth
Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller & Robert Shaw	A Man For All Seasons
Victor Lundberg	An Open Letter to My Teenage Son
Rod McKuen	Lonesome Cities
Martin Luther King Jr.	I Have a Dream
Paul Scofield	Murder in the Cathedral
Martin Starkie	The Canterbury Pilgrims

1970s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	1970
1971
1972	1973	1974
1975	1976	1977	1978
1979
Art Linkletter & Diane Linkletter	We Love You, Call Collect
Walter Cronkite	Man on the Moon
James Earl Jones	The Great White Hope
Martin Luther King Jr.	Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam
Ambrose, Dryden, Hecht, Molloy, Carawan, La Farge & Seeger	Poems and Ballads from 100-Plus American Poets
Apollo 8, 11 & 12 Astronauts, John F. Kennedy & Richard Nixon	In the Beginning
Bill Cosby	Grover Henson Feels Forgotten
Everett Dirksen	Everett Dirksen's America
Les Crane	Desiderata
Richard Chamberlain	Hamlet (a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation)
Walter Cronkite	I Can Hear It Now/The Sixties
Stacy Keach, Robert Ryan & Geraldine Fitzgerald	Long Day's Journey Into Night
James Whitmore	Will Rogers' USA
The Original Broadway Cast	Lenny
Angela Davis	Angela Davis Speaks
Rod McKuen	The Word
Yevgeny Yevtushenko	Yevtushenko
Richard Harris	Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Billie Holiday	Songs and Conversations
Vincent Price	Tales of Witches, Ghosts and Goblins
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.	Slaughterhouse Five
John Wayne	America, Why I Love Her
Peter Cook & Dudley Moore	Good Evening
Sam Ervin	Senator Sam at Home
Rod McKuen	Autumn
Eric Sevareid	An Ear to the Sounds of Our History
James Whitmore	Give 'em Hell, Harry!
Alistair Cooke	Talk About America
Richard Harris	The Prophet
Claudia McNeil	The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Maureen Stapleton	To Kill a Mockingbird
Orson Welles	Immortal Sherlock Holmes (Mercury Theatre on the Air)
Henry Fonda, Helen Hayes, James Earl Jones & Orson Welles	Great American Documents
Ray Bradbury	Fahrenheit 451
Charlton Heston	The Old Man and the Sea
James Mason	A Tale of Two Cities
William Shatner	Foundation: The Psychohistorians
Julie Harris	The Belle of Amherst
Alex Haley	Alex Haley Tells the Story of His Search for Roots
Original Cast & Ntozake Shange	For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
Christopher Tolkien	The Silmarillion
Harry Truman & Ben Gradus	The Truman Tapes
Orson Welles	Citizen Kane (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Henry Fonda	The Grapes of Wrath
Judith Anderson, Claire Bloom, James Mason, George Rose & Gordon Gould	Wuthering Heights
Richard Nixon & David Frost	The Nixon Interviews with David Frost
Various Artists	Roots (Original Television Soundtrack)

1980s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	1980
1981
1982
1983	1984
1985	1986	1987	1988
1989
John Gielgud	Ages of Man (Readings from Shakespeare)
Henry Fonda	The Ox-Bow Incident
Jim Morrison	An American Prayer
Ken Nordine	Stare with Your Ears
Various Artists	Apocalypse Now (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Orson Welles & Helen Hayes	Orson Welles & Helen Hayes at Their Best
Pat Carroll	Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein
Mahalia Jackson	I Sing Because I'm Happy, Vols. 1 and 2
Original Cast	Adventures of Luke Skywalker: The Empire Strikes Back
Orson Welles	Obediently Yours
Peter Ustinov	James Thurber: A Curb In The Sky And Other Stories
Orson Welles	Donovan's Brain
E. G. Marshall	Justice Holmes' Decisions
James Mason	Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
Paul McCartney & Vic Garbarini	The McCartney Interview
Ed McMahon	'Twas the Night Before Christmas (from Christmas with Friends, featuring Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, and Tommy Newsom)
Tom Voegeli	Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Movie on Record
Roger Rees	Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby
Isaac Asimov	Foundation's Edge
John Gielgud & Ralph Richardson	No Man's Land
Arthur C. Clarke	2010: Odyssey Two
William Warfield	Copland: Lincoln Portrait
Steve Allen & Jayne Meadows	Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Home Computers
Jane Fonda & Femmy De Lyser	Jane Fonda's Workout Record for Pregnancy, Birth and Recovery
John Gielgud & Irene Worth	Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Ben Kingsley	The Words of Gandhi
Jeremy Irons & Glenn Close	The Real Thing (Broadway Cast)
Jesse Jackson	Our Time Has Come
John Lennon & Yoko Ono	Heart Play (Unfinished Dialogue)
Mike Berniker, producer & the Broadway cast	Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Alan Arkin	Catch-22
Dick Cavett	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
John le Carré	The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Philip Roth	Zuckerman Bound
Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chips Moman, Ricky Nelson, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins & Sam Phillips	Interviews from the Class of '55 Recording Sessions
F. Murray Abraham	Interview with the Vampire
Ray Bradbury	The Stories of Ray Bradbury
Bill Cosby	Hardheaded Boys
John Gielgud	Gulliver (composed by Patrick Williams)
Garrison Keillor	Lake Wobegon Days
Lauren Bacall	Lauren Bacall by Myself
Katharine Hepburn	"Lincoln Portrait" (from Aaron Copland: Lincoln Portrait)
Leonard Nimoy	Whales Alive
Leonard Nimoy & George Takei	Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Jesse Jackson	"Speech by Rev. Jesse Jackson, July 27"
(from One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism)
John Cleese	The Screwtape Letters
John Gielgud	A Christmas Carol
Garrison Keillor & Various Artists	A Prairie Home Companion: The 2nd Annual Farewell Performance
Jonathan Winters	Winters' Tale

1990s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	1990
1991
1992
1993
1994	1995	1996
1997
1998
1999
Gilda Radner	It's Always Something
Erma Bombeck	I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise
Robert Fulghum	All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
John Gielgud	Sir John Gielgud Reads Alice in Wonderland
Jason Robards, Steve Allen, Douglas Edwards & Cast	The War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Production
George Burns	Gracie: A Love Story
Garrison Keillor	A Prairie Home Companion: The 4th Annual Farewell Performance
John F. Kennedy Jr.	Profiles in Courage
Kyle MacLachlan	"Diane..." The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper
Jimmy Stewart	Jimmy Stewart and His Poems
Ken Burns	The Civil War
Douglas Adams	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Katharine Hepburn	Me: Stories of My Life
Charles Kuralt	A Life on the Road
Earvin "Magic" Johnson & Robert O'Keefe	What You Can Do to Avoid AIDS
Fannie Flagg	Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Garrison Keillor	Stories
Ken Nordine	Devout Catalyst
Patrick Stewart	A Christmas Carol
Orson Welles & Peter Bogdanovich	This Is Orson Welles
Maya Angelou	On the Pulse of Morning
Levar Burton	Miles: The Autobiography
Arlo Guthrie	Bound for Glory
Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward	Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
Emma Thompson	Howards End
Henry Rollins	Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag
Kenneth Branagh & the Renaissance Theatre Company	Hamlet
Ken Burns	Baseball
Ben Kingsley	Schindler's List
Gregory Peck	The Bible (The New Testament)
Maya Angelou	Phenomenal Woman
Danny Glover	Long Walk to Freedom
Garrison Keillor	Guy Noir: Radio Private Eye
Leonard Nimoy	I Am Spock
Hillary Clinton	It Takes a Village
Ed Asner, Ellen Burstyn, C. C. H. Pounder & Alfre Woodard	Grow Old Along with Me, the Best Is Yet to Be
Lauren Bacall, Martin Landau, Jack Lemmon & Gregory Peck	Harry S Truman: A Journey to Independence
Garrison Keillor	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Charles Kuralt	Charles Kuralt's America
Charles Kuralt	Charles Kuralt's Spring
Maya Angelou	Even the Stars Look Lonesome
Jimmy Carter	Living Faith
Walter Cronkite	A Reporter's Life
Jodie Foster	Contact
Christopher Reeve	Still Me
Jimmy Carter	The Virtues of Aging
David Holt & Bill Mooney	Spiders in the Hairdo: Modern Urban Legends
Garrison Keillor	Wobegon Boy
Toni Morrison	Beloved

2000s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007	2008	2009
LeVar Burton	The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.
Nanci Griffith	The Chieftains: The Authorized Biography (by John Glatt)
Merle Haggard	Merle Haggard's My House of Memories
Frank McCourt	'Tis
Mandy Patinkin & Betty Buckley with Walter Cronkite	The Diaries of Adam & Eve: Translated by Mark Twain
Sidney Poitier	The Measure of a Man
Matt Dillon	On the Road
Steve Martin	Shopgirl
Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara	Married to Laughter: A Love Story
Various artists including Kathleen Turner, Patrick Stewart & Al Pacino	The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets
Quincy Jones	Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
Jimmy Carter	An Hour Before Daylight
Garrison Keillor	Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
Carl Reiner	Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings by Mark Twain
Various artists including Rob Lowe, Noah Wyle, Joan Allen & Tom Brokaw and narrator Harry Smith	War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
Maya Angelou	A Song Flung Up to Heaven
Tim Robbins	The Great Gatsby
Robert Evans	The Kid Stays in the Picture
Michael J. Fox	Lucky Man
Christopher Reeve	Nothing Is Impossible
Al Franken	Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Don Cheadle	Fear Itself
Hillary Clinton	Living History
Nikki Giovanni	The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection
Bill Maher	When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden
Bill Clinton	My Life
Tyne Daly, John Lithgow, Joanne Rogers, Lily Tomlin & André Watts	The World According to Mr. Rogers
David Holt & Zeb Holt	Live & Kickin' at the National Storytelling Festival
Steve Martin	The Pleasure of My Company
David Sedaris	Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Barack Obama	Dreams from My Father
George Carlin	When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Al Franken	The Al Franken Show Party Album
Garrison Keillor	The Adventures of Guy Noir
Sean Penn	Chronicles: Volume One
Jimmy Carter	Our Endangered Values
Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee	Ossie and Ruby
Al Franken	The Truth (with Jokes)
Bill Maher	New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer
Bob Newhart	I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!
Barack Obama	The Audacity of Hope
Alan Alda	Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Maya Angelou	Celebrations
Bill Clinton	Giving
Jimmy Carter	Sunday Mornings in Plains
Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon & Blair Underwood	An Inconvenient Truth
Steve Martin	Born Standing Up
Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report cast	I Am America (and So Can You!)
Sidney Poitier	Life Beyond Measure
David Sedaris	When You Are Engulfed in Flames

2010s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	2010
2011
2012	2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Michael J. Fox	Always Looking Up
Yuri Rasovsky & Josh Stanton	Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon
Richard Dreyfuss & David Strathairn	The Lincoln–Douglas Debates
Jonathan Winters	A Very Special Time
Jimmy Carter	We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land
Carrie Fisher	Wishful Drinking
Jon Stewart & The Daily Show Staff	Earth (The Audiobook)
Woody Allen	The Woody Allen Collection: Mere Anarchy, Side Effects, Without Feathers, Getting Even
Carol Burnett	This Time Together
Craig Ferguson	American on Purpose
Michael J. Fox	A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future
Sarah Silverman	The Bedwetter
Betty White	If You Ask Me (and of Course You Won't)
Tina Fey	Bossypants
Nathan Burbank, Bryan Cumming, Dennis Scott & David Toledo	Fab Fan Memories: The Beatles Bond
Dan Donohue & the Oregon Shakespeare Festival cast	Hamlet
Val Kilmer & the Hollywood Theater of the Ear Cast	The Mark of Zorro
Janis Ian	Society's Child
Scott Creswell & Dan Zitt, producers	American Grown
Bill Clinton	Back to Work
Rachel Maddow	Drift
Ellen DeGeneres	Seriously... I'm Kidding
Stephen Colbert	America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't
Carol Burnett	Carrie and Me
Billy Crystal	Still Foolin' Em
David Sedaris	Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Pete Seeger	The Storm King
Joan Rivers (posthumous)	Diary of a Mad Diva
James Franco	Actors Anonymous
Jimmy Carter	A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
John Waters	Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America
Elizabeth Warren	A Fighting Chance
Gloria Gaynor	We Will Survive: True Stories of Encouragement, Inspiration and the Power of Song
Jimmy Carter	A Full Life: Reflections at 90
Patti Smith	Blood on Snow
Dick Cavett	Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments and Assorted Hijinks
Janis Ian & Jean Smart	Patience and Sarah
Amy Poehler	Yes Please
Carol Burnett	In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox
Elvis Costello	Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Amy Schumer	The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
Patti Smith	M Train
Various Artists	Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk
Carrie Fisher (posthumous)	The Princess Diarist
Bruce Springsteen	Born to Run
Shelly Peiken	Confessions of a Serial Songwriter
Bernie Sanders & Mark Ruffalo	Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In
Neil deGrasse Tyson	Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Jimmy Carter	Faith: A Journey for All
Courtney B. Vance	Accessory to War
David Sedaris	Calypso
Questlove	Creative Quest
Tiffany Haddish	The Last Black Unicorn

2020s

Year	Performing Artist	Work	2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025	2026
Michelle Obama	Becoming
Michael Diamond, Adam Horovitz, Scott Sherratt & Dan Zitt (producers)	The Beastie Boys Book
Eric Alexandrakis	Catatonia: 20 Years as a Two-Time Cancer Survivor
John Waters	Mr. Know-It-All
Sekou Andrews & the String Theory	Sekou Andrews & the String Theory
Rachel Maddow	Blowout
Flea	Acid for the Children: A Memoir
Ken Jennings	Alex Trebek — The Answer Is...
Ronan Farrow	Catch and Kill
Meryl Streep (& Full Cast)	Charlotte's Web
Don Cheadle	Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation from John Lewis
LeVar Burton	Aftermath
J. Ivy	Catching Dreams: Live at Fort Knox Chicago
Dave Chappelle & Amir Sulaiman	8:46
Barack Obama	A Promised Land
Viola Davis	Finding Me
Mel Brooks	All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business
Jamie Foxx	Act Like You Got Some Sense
Lin-Manuel Miranda	Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
Questlove	Music Is History
Michelle Obama	The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times
Meryl Streep	Big Tree
William Shatner	Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder
Rick Rubin	The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Bernie Sanders	It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
Jimmy Carter (posthumous)	Last Sunday in Plains: A Centennial Celebration
George Clinton	...And Your Ass Will Follow
Guy Oldfield	All You Need Is Love: The Beatles In Their Own Words
Dolly Parton	Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones
Barbra Streisand	My Name Is Barbra
Kathy Garver	Elvis, Rocky & Me: The Carol Connors Story
Trevor Noah	Into the Uncut Grass
Ketanji Brown Jackson	Lovely One: A Memoir
The Dalai Lama	Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Fab Morvan	You Know It’s True: The Real Story of Milli Vanilli