Keynote Speakers

Julia Whelan

Our opening keynote speaker Julia Whelan has been dubbed “The Meryl Streep of Audiobooks” by NYT bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid, “The Adele of Audiobooks" by The New Yorker and “The Michael Jordan of Audio” by General David H. Petraeus, Julia Whelan is an author, screenwriter, lifelong actor, acclaimed audiobook narrator of over 650 titles, and most recently the recipient of the Gracie Award for Best Fiction Narrator (presented by The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation), the SOVAS (Society of Voice Arts) Lifetime Achievement Award, and winner of the Best Fiction Narrator Audie of 2025.

Her performance of her own debut novel, the international bestseller My Oxford Year, garnered a Society of Voice Arts award and was released in August of this year as a Netflix film. Her 2022 novel, Thank You For Listening, was a Best-of-the-Year pick at Amazon, Audible, and NPR as well as a Goodreads Choice Award nominee and winner of the Golden Poppy.

Julia has also applied her talent to voicing longform journalism. As head of production at the start Audm (since acquired by the New York times), she has voiced Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer, Rebecca Traister, Ronan Farrow, and Davis Sedaris, among other well-known journalists. Her voice has become a staple for magazines such as Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and more.

She is the founder of Audiobrary, a new audio publishing and retail company with its own app. Her latest books – the 8-part romance audio series Casanova LLC and the annotated Victorian poetry anthology The Poetry Of My Oxford Year – debuted exclusively on her site.

And she is also a Grammy-nominated audiobook director, a former writing tutor, a half-decent amateur baker, and a certified tea sommelier.

Sam Helmick

Our closing keynote speaker, Sam Helmick, is President of the American Library Association and an international speaker on advocacy, intellectual freedom, social marketing, outreach, wellness, and library fundraising. They serve as the Community & Access Services Coordinator at Iowa City Public Library, leading Help Desk, Bookmobile, and Public Relations teams.

A past president of the Iowa Library Association, Sam led during a year of unprecedented legislative and legal challenges to libraries. Their leadership with ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table and ILA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee—recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award—reflects a career devoted to the right to read and the power of access.

Guided by the belief that our stories are worth sharing, Sam champions storytelling as a way to build understanding—which is the foundation of support.