Alison Larkin

Alison Larkin, born April 28, 1963, is an English American actress, comedian, novelist, and audiobook narrator. She trained as a classical actress at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London before building a career that has spanned stage, comedy, fiction, and audio performance across both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Larkin's early stage work in England included the role of Daisy in Daisy Pulls It Off at the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead, and she originated the role of Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury in 1990. After relocating to New York City, she transitioned into stand-up comedy, performing regularly at Comic Strip Live in New York and The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Her New York stage work included an Off-Broadway engagement at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where she understudied Harriet Walter in Three Birds Alighting on a Field and Allison Janney in New England. In 1997, she appeared on Broadway in the Royal National Theater's production of Stanley.

Larkin developed an autobiographical one-woman comedy show about an adopted English woman who discovers her birth parents in the United States. The show previewed at the Manchester Royal Exchange and the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms in 2000, and received its London premiere at the Soho Theatre as part of the London Comedy Festival in 2004. That show served as the foundation for her novel The English American, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, which became a bestseller. Larkin narrated the audiobook edition herself, and it received an AudioFile Earphones Award in 2012.

Her voice work has included Pauline in Pauline's Perilous Pyramid for Square One Television in 1992, The Good Witch of the North and the China Princess in The Firesign Theatre's The Wonderful World of Oz in 2000, and the series regular role of Hermione in the Cartoon Network's Mike, Lu & Og. Larkin has recorded more than 200 audiobooks, among them The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, and the Agatha Raisin series by M.C. Beaton. She has received multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards for her narrations, including recognition for Peter Pan and the Inconsiderate Waiter, Sense and Sensibility, and Dracula & Carmilla. In 2016, she founded her own audiobook production company, Alison Larkin Presents, which publishes classic English novels, contemporary mysteries, women's fiction, and nonfiction.