(VOXtra) - The Audio Publishers Association (APA) will honor bestselling author Stephen King for Lifetime Achievement at the 2020 Audie Awards® Gala, March 2 at Guastavino's in New York City.

Known as the most prestigious award in the audiobook industry, the Audies will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, capping a period of tremendous growth in popularity and acclaim for audiobooks, the APA notes.

Winners in scores of audiobook categories will be announced at the Gala, which will also feature a Red Carpet photo session and reception.

King is a four-time Audie Award® winner and 17-time nominee, and the author of more than 60 books - all of them worldwide bestsellers. 

A long-time advocate for audiobooks, King once wrote of his love of the format:

He has narrated some of his own audiobooks, published audiobook originals, and has used his megaphone to highlight the joys of listening.

His recent work includes The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (co-written with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and an AT&T Audience Network original television series).

His novel 11/22/63 was named a top 10 book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower and It are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest grossing horror film of all time.

King is also recipient of the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

He lives in Bangor, ME with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.              

The APA also announced that celebrated writers Adam Silvera, Emma Straub and R. Eric Thomas will serve as judges for the 2020 Audiobook of the Year Award.

     

Silvera (pictured) is the New York Times bestselling author of They Both Die at the End, More Happy Than Not, History Is All You Left Me - and together with Becky Albertalli - co-author of What If It's Us. He was named a Publishers Weekly Flying Start.

Born and raised in the Bronx, he was a bookseller before shifting to children's publishing and has worked at a literary development company and a creative writing website for teens, as well as a book reviewer of children's and young adult novels.

Straub (pictured) is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Vacationers and Modern Lovers, as well as the novel Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married.

Her next novel, All Adults Here, releases in May 2020. 

Her books have been published in more than 20 languages, and with her husband, she owns and operates Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn.

Thomas (pictured) is a senior staff writer at Elle online, where he has written the daily pop culture and politics humor column "Eric Reads the News" since 2016.

His first book, Here for It, will be published in February 2020. He's also been published by The New York Times, among many other publications.

As a playwright, his work has been seen on stages around the country, winning the Barrymore Award and the Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award, and he was a finalist for the Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association New Play Award.

Thomas is also the long-running host of The Moth StorySlams in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. He lives in Baltimore with his husband, the Reverend David Norse Thomas, and "an out-of-control collection of succulents, candles and tote bags."

Formed in 1986, the APA is a not-for-profit trade association that advocates the common, collective business interests of audio publishers. The APA consists of audio publishing companies and suppliers, narrators, distributors, and retailers of spoken word products and allied fields related to the production, distribution, and sale of audiobooks.

For more about the Gala, visit www.audiopub.org/members/audies.

You can learn more about past Audie Award winners and awards by visiting www.audiopub.org/winners.

And more about the APA, events and membership is here: www.audiopub.org.

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