as of 5/1/24*
Additional guest coaches and publisher representatives will be added as enrollment grows with the goal of keeping the ratio of coaches to narrators at an optimal level for personal engagement.
We are excited that our publisher representatives will also be working with people individually as one-on-one coaches.
The Audiobooks at Sea 2025 Crew
Carol Monda, Guest Coach
carolmondavo.com
Natalie Naudus, Guest Coach
natalienaudus.com
Sean Pratt, Guest Coach
seanprattpresents.com
Tamara Marston, Guest Coach
Senior Casting Director, Podium Audio
Debra Deyan, Guest Panelist
Owner, Deyan Audio
Ana Clements, Guest Presenter
anaclements.co.uk
Joel Froomkin, Creator
Host and Head Coach
Rich Najuch, Creator
Producer and Admin
www.cruisingwithrich.com
*** Guest coaches subject to change. Any changes in the coaching team will be reflected here on the website.
All listed coaches are eager to join us and have every intention of attending and doing their best. That being said, life happens. Changes are possible, but we will guarantee that the guest coaching team will be of the highest caliber and provide excellent educational opportunities.
Crew Biographies
Carol Monda
Guest Coach
Carol Monda was trained at NYC’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts and holds a Fine Arts degree in Drama from Catholic University. Her voice-over clients include ID Discovery, McDonald's, HSBC, The Guggenheim, NY Historical Society, and CitiBank. Carol has been the voice of the Turner Classic Film Festival since its inception in 2010 and can be heard on more than 450 audiobooks in 18 genres. Titles for Audible, Blackstone, Blunderwoman, Brilliance, Deyan, Hachette, Harper, Highbridge, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Recorded Books, among others, have garnered 2 Audie Awards, 2 Audie Nominations, several Earphones Awards and many Years' Best mentions. She has devised and taught classes in commercial, audiobook narration, voice and speech, acting, scene study, audition techniques, text analysis and accent reduction. She has served as an adjunct professor at NYU's Film School and as an instructor of Voice and Speech at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts.. She’s taught and paneled at VO Atlanta, VO Mastery, the NE Narrator Retreat, APAC, Audiobookin’ in Andover, Voice Actors of NYC and countless workshops. Carol also has a robust private coaching practice. She is thrilled beyond words to join Audiobooks at Sea. carolmondavo.com
Natalie Naudus
Guest Coach
“A fave among audiobook listeners” (Buzzfeed), Natalie Naudus is one of the most popular audiobook narrators working today. She has won an Audie award and nine Earphones awards, and maintains a robust social media following. She lives with her family on a mountain in Virginia.
Sean Pratt
Guest Coach
Sean Pratt has been a working actor for over 30 years. He has been an audiobook narrator for 25 years (aka – Lloyd James), recording over 1,100 books in almost every genre and has received nine AudioFile Magazine “Earphones” awards, five SOVAS nominations, and five “Audie” nominations from the Audio Publishers Association.
Sean is also the author of “To Be or Wanna Be – The Top Ten Differences between a Successful Actor and a Starving Artist.”
Currently, Sean coaches performers on audiobook narration technique, as well as teaching classes on and writing articles about the business of “The Biz”.
Tamara Marston, Guest Coach
Senior Casting Director, Podium Audio
Tamara Marston is the Senior Casting Director at Podium Audio.
Coming from a theater and music career, both as a performer and director, she first entered the audiobook industry as a narrator in 2009 and recorded for Blackstone, Highbridge, Harper Collins, Audible and others before moving into mentoring, coaching and casting; she came to Podium in 2016 after casting for BeeAudio for several years.
Tamara lives in Southern Oregon with three dogs, two cats, and a 30-year-old African Grey parrot who’s currently composing her third operetta.
Debra Deyan, Guest Panelist
Owner, Deyan Audio
Debra Deyan is a 30 year veteran producer of audiobooks and owner of Deyan Audio the world's largest independent producer of audiobooks, working for over 30 publishers. She has won numerous awards including 4 Grammys, 11 Grammy nominations, countless Audies, Odyssey, Carnegie and Earphone awards. She was awarded the Life Time Achievement award from the APA in 2013 for her efforts in helping pioneer the audiobook industry. She owns two Los Angeles recording studios with 9 recording booths. She also owns a video game/interactive toy venture and co-founded an institute which teaches audiobook narration and production.
Ana Clements
Guest Presenter
Award-nominated Ana Clements has worked professionally in the voice industry for 10 years. As a stage actress and bilingual talent, she brings an abundance of character voices to her British and Spanish audiobook narration. As the founder of ‘Audiobooks’ on Clubhouse, hosting regular sessions, and also as a podcast host, Ana understands the challenges of our creative careers. She has coached and spoken on Audiobooks at VO Atlanta, MexicoAudio, MAVO and One Voice conferences, and at smaller events. She trained and has been coaching narrators since 2022. Her practical and insightful work empowers them to push past their self-limitations “with actionable direction”. Her creative coaching has been described as “helping others to reach a point of clarity on who they are as a creative professional”.
Joel Froomkin
Host, Head Coach, and Creator
Joel is an Audie nominated, eleven-time Earphones Award-Winning narrator of over 450 titles. He was the recipient of the 2020 Best Male Narrator Award at the Independent Audio Book Awards and the 2020 Best Humor Narration recipient at the Society of Voice Arts Awards (in addition to his five other SOVAS nominations). He is the recipient of two Audiobook Reviewer awards and was named the first member of the Narrator Hall of Fame and All-Time Favorite Narrator in the Goodreads M/M Reader’s Choice Awards.
With an MFA in theatre from USC, he has served as Director of Drama at Manchester University and taught accents at NYU. He is the creator of Acting for Audio, a zoom-based acting course focused on the art of narration. He is a sucker for Disney and dachshunds.
Rich Najuch
Producer, Admin, and Creator
Rich is the one you will be emailing, phoning, or texting with! All cabin arrangements and workshop bookings will be handled by him.
Rich is an Accredited Cruise Counselor, member of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), and a registered cruise travel agent.
He is familiar with planning and executing events through his work as Executive Producer at The New Huntington Theater for 10 years, as Executive Assistant to the Dean of Columbia Business School, and a lifetime in the theater. When not booking cruise adventures for Audiobook Narrators, Rich is usually working at a sewing or embroidery machine.