Liam Gerrard, a Sheffield actor and acclaimed voice over actor was nominated for an Audie Award at the 2024 ceremony in Hollywood, his name is amongst big celebrities such as Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.
The Audie Awards are known as the Oscars of audiobooks and the pinnacle of audiobook excellency. The ceremony was held in Hollywood, 4th of March.
His book ‘The adventures of Finn MacCool and other irish folk tales’ was shortlisted for best short story collection.
He said: “When I got the email and clicked the link to see I couldn’t quite believe it, I had to read the email four times.”
Mr Gerrard said: “I’m Irish and my family is Irish, my grandma died eight years and when she died I was looking through her books in her house and she had loads of book about Finn MacCool, who is an old Irish legend, and thought that this stories were great and we don’t read them anymore, they’re kind of lost, even in Ireland people don’t kind of know about them.”
Mr Gerrard added that these stories are presented as kids fairy tales, but they have quiet dark themes, he wanted to put together a new compilation of books targeted to a more modern and mature audience, while still being faithful to the original story.
He said how the Audie Awards are normally dominated by big publishers who have a bigger marketing budget and being the only independent publisher to be nominated was a huge deal.
When talking about his inspiration towards acting he said how during primary school he had his first play and had so much fun every time there was a play he was auditioning.
Mr Gerrard added: “ I just remember feeling like this was so much fun, this is what I want to do, it never entered my mind not to do anything else, i just needed to find a way of getting paid for it.”
Although his audiobook, “The adventures of Finn MacCool and other Irish folk tales” didn’t win the award for best short story collection, being nominated for the awards was a huge achievement in itself.