With “Quite the Contrary”, an Audible Editor Creates Her First Original

How often does someone wind up working for the very company that will help her bring her life story to the world? It’s a writer’s dream, but this is just one of Audible Editor Yvonne Durant’s incredible true stories—the rest are packed into her riveting, funny, fearless memoir, Quite the Contrary, which has just been released as an Audible Original.

Durant, who grew up in Brooklyn, worked with various Madison Avenue advertising agencies as a copywriter in the ‘70s and ‘80s, where she was not only one of few women in the room, but the sole Black woman. Several years into her career, a chance encounter with Miles Davis led to a thrilling romance. “It was a six-month relationship, pretty intense,” says Durant. “But my story is bigger than him. He had the pleasure of being part of my story, lucky him.” Durant was determined to stay focused instead on succeeding at the blue-chip agency where she had just landed a role. Her work paid off and she moved to a position at an agency in Milan, Italy, where she lived for seven years.

While abroad, Durant’s writing expanded. She says, “I upped the game and started submitting ideas and wrote essays and articles in national magazines and newspapers. And that was difficult because I was writing a lot about race-related topics. It wasn’t easy finding editors who were open to those subjects.” The longer-form writing led to her trying some new creative forms: a script here, a novel there, and then Durant started to write her own story. At first she wrote it as fiction, then she realized, "I don't have to fictionalize this. The truth is better; do the real thing."

Durant joined Audible four years ago as a customer care copywriter. Her penchant for storytelling led her to start an employees-only newsletter profiling her colleagues in customer service, many of whom were Newark natives whose backgrounds and lives she was learning about and finding fascinating.

In 2021 she opted to do a rotation, an Audible program through which employees can work with various teams and explore new opportunities that align with their interests and talents. After a stint writing for marketing teams, Durant found her perfect fit with our editorial team, where she develops stories for the blog and Voices of Audible. Being an Audible editor connects many career dots for her, as she gets to once again write longer-form pieces concerned with social justice, and helps to connect Audible listeners with titles that reflect and amplify their identities and cultures, as well as the issues that affect their lives.

As Durant was embarking on this career journey, she mentioned her memoir to one of our acquisition editors and he asked to see it. Durant sent him six chapters, and he wrote back: “This is terrific.” After the final edits were made, Durant opted to have a professional narrate the audiobook rather than narrate it herself. “As soon as I heard Allyson Johnson narrate a couple of pages,” she says, “I knew we’d found the right person. She understood my sense of humor, she had a slight rasp in her voice that lent the audio an elegant grit, a voice with texture.”

Now that her Original is available and her coworkers are eager to listen, Durant jokes, "Well, gee, now everyone's going to know all my business. So maybe it's good that we're home for now.” But laying it all on the table is what Durant is known for, so it’s fitting that she has built a space at Audible for others to do the same. Together with our Director of Multicultural Programming Abby West, Durant co-founded the Black Employee Network (BEN), one of Audible’s employee-led impact groups, with the purpose of encouraging members to share their experiences openly, to network with each other, work with leadership, learn about career growth opportunities at Audible, and receive support. BEN is also instrumental in elevating Black creators and voices through Audible content. Driving progress is in Durant’s DNA, she says, as her mother was a Civil Rights activist. “We've built a great community,” she says, lauding the help of Audible’s “supportive leadership.”

If the story of Durant’s life is a study in charting one’s own course and succeeding on one’s own terms, her Audible chapter feels like a sort of culmination, a satisfying pay-off. “I look at Audible as a land of opportunity,” she says. “I mean, when I went in for an interview, I hardly thought, ‘One day I'm going to have an Original.’’’ And she’s nowhere near done, she says. “I think this is just the beginning.”