About Davina Porter

The storytelling emprise of celebrated narrator Davina Porter began with a playful mnemonic exercise in her youth. In an interview with AudioFile magazine, Porter revealed that, as a young girl, “she discovered the best way to learn something—a poem to memorize or history facts—was to say or read it aloud. She did this, often to her dolls lined up along the wall.” With more than 400 audiobooks to her name and numerous Audie and Earphones nominations and awards, her once modest audience has since grown considerably.

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series has a large and obsessively devoted fanbase. To many fans, Davina Porter’s name is inextricable from the Outlander universe, and earning such respect from such a fanbase is no simple task. The series is massive in length and varied in theme, encompassing steamy romance, time-traveling science fiction, adventure, history, and, as the author puts it, “voyages of daring, journeys of both body and soul.” A story of such scope and complexity requires intricate preparation and meticulous attention to detail in order to maintain the listener’s interest. In addition to copious note-taking and character study, Porter carefully considers all components of a recording session: from the types of food she consumes during breaks (apples because they digest at low-volume) to the clothes she wears (she has stressed that “silk whispers”).

Apart from the Outlander universe, Porter is equally venerated for her intelligent performances of many classics, such as Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. She has also received abundant praise for her lithesome performances of many popular fantasy, adventure, and mystery series, such as C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr, Alexander McCall Smith’s Sunday Philosophy Club, and Anne Perry’s Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. Porter also has many stage credits to her name, both as actor and director, most notably having been a member of the Square One Theatre Company.

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