Just in: Blackstone’s 2011 Grammy nominees

Congratulations to this year’s Grammy nominees!

Blackstone is pleased to announce its 2011 Grammy nominations for Best Spoken Word Album:

• Hamlet

• The Mark of Zorro™

Hamlet
by William Shakespeare, read by a full cast, produced and directed by Ira Burton; based on the 2010 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production directed by Bill Rauch

Blackstone Audio’s collaboration with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival brings a brilliant production of Shakespeare’s disturbing and psychologically rich masterpiece Hamlet. It’s fully dramatized for an unforgettable listening experience. The story is set in Denmark where a king is dead. His brother, Claudius, has snatched the throne and the widowed queen. Life goes on—for everyone but Hamlet. The prince, fixated on his uncle as the murderer, is charged by his father’s ghost to avenge the wrong.

The Mark of Zorro™
Written by Johnston McCulley and adapted by Yuri Rasovsky, this production stars Val Kilmer and a full cast.

The first major audio play based on this groundbreaking novel by Johnston McCulley, The Mark of Zorro—has been masterfully adapted into a full-cast audio drama by the award-winning Hollywood Theater of the Ear especially for Blackstone Audio. It’s an exciting, action packed, swashbuckling adventure that will have listeners on the edge of their seats.

 Also, congratulations to Steve Earle on a Grammy nomination for his I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive music album, which is also the title of his novel, available on audio from Blackstone. Check out our exclusive interview with Steve Earle, right here on The Audiobook Insider.

Blackstone Audio is honored to have received five Grammy nominations in just three years: American On Purpose, a copublication with HarperCollins, for Best Spoken Word Album in 2010, The Maltese Falcon for Best Spoken Word Album for Adults and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, both in 2009.

Stay tuned—we look forward to the results at the 54th Grammy awards ceremony on February 12!