Meet Prentice Onayemi

Prentice Onayemi

Prentice Onayemi’s lyrical style and selective narration choices have
quickly set him apart as a major talent in the audiobook world.

Top Performances

"His ability to impress a man he'd never met was all he could think about."
-0.00
"If we use the dragons, we will destroy this land."
-0.00
The curious sneaker battle...
-0.00
"To see or hear Douglass became a kind of wonder of the American world."
-0.00
"I haven't stopped squirming since I've arrived in this city."
-0.00
  • Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club)
  • "His ability to impress a man he'd never met was all he could think about."
  • The Rage of Dragons
  • "If we use the dragons, we will destroy this land."
  • Rivals! Frenemies Who Changed the World
  • The curious sneaker battle...
  • Frederick Douglass
  • "To see or hear Douglass became a kind of wonder of the American world."
  • The Sellout
  • "I haven't stopped squirming since I've arrived in this city."

Greatest Hits

Editor's Pick

More About Prentice Onayemi

Among his best loved performances are all of author Paul Beatty’s audiobooks, including The Sellout, which won a Man Booker Prize and earned Onayemi recognition as an Audie Award finalist for Best Fiction narrator.
Onayemi is drawn to interesting narration projects and promising literary debuts. In 2016, he performed Imbolo Mbue’s acclaimed debut novel Behold the Dreamers, a listen about a young Cameroonian couple making ends meet in New York when the 2008 recession hits. The same year, he was in the award-winning multi-cast performance of Christodora, Tim Murphy's debut novel featuring an eclectic mix of characters in Manhattan’s East Village. More recently, he performed 2017’s Beasts Made of Night by debut-author Tochi Onyebuchi, a Nigerian-influenced fantasy about a 17-year-old with dark magical powers. Prentice Onayemi’s performances are praised as vivid, haunting, and able to depict different cultural worlds within a single story.
Before he started performing audiobooks, Prentice Onayemi first found voice-over work narrating English language learning programs. He holds a BFA in Drama from NYU and has also become known for his performances in downtown NYC passion projects and Broadway mainstays. On the screen, you might have seen him in the hit series House of Cards.
Onayemi’s creative pursuits dovetail with his business ventures. A graduate of Columbia University’s MBA program, he’s co-founded a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, NY, and a nonprofit that develops creative self-expression workshops for survivors of armed conflicts and natural disasters. He has also worked on research studies and policy recommendations to develop the performing arts in Queens, NY, and has co-authored case studies about artists as social entrepreneurs for Harvard Business Review. His latest project is Grains of Salt, an organization that helps creatives strike a balance between art and contributing to societal development.


Awards and Accolades

Audie Award Finalist
Best Fiction, 2016

AudioFile Earphones
Award Winner


The Narrator Hall of Fame





T H E  N A R R A T O R
H A L L  O F  F A M E