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Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy's featured story recounts his quest to uncover his family's Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection.

Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are actively seeking long-lost relatives, meeting up with seldom-seen family members, or perhaps just visiting the old country to get a feel for their roots. A foreword by the Genographic Project's Spencer Wells sets the scene.

Pico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist long based in both California and Japan. He is the author of numerous books about crossing cultures, among them Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, and The Global Soul. An essayist for Time since 1986, he also publishes regularly in Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and many other publications across the globe.

Spencer Wells is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and the director of the Genographic Project. After studying under genetic pioneer Luigi Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford University, Wells began an unusual career that mixes science, writing, and filmmaking. His acclaimed first book, The Journey of Man, combined his own DNA research with the work of archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleoclimatologists, and linguists to show how modern humans came to populate the planet. He is also the author of Deep Ancestry.

Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey's Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.

Patrick Lawlor, an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and Audie Award finalist, is also an accomplished stage actor, director, and combat choreographer. He has worked extensively off Broadway and has been an actor and stuntman in both film and television.

Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor and recording artist who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook, Many Things Invisible. Alongside her narration work, she has released a new album of original songs, Only an Angel.

Amy Rubinate has narrated over 250 audiobooks and won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her books have been selected for AudioFile's Best Romance of 2016 list; Booklist's Top 10 Romance, Top 10 Historical Fiction, Editor's Choice Media; and YALSA's Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults. She has a degree in oral interpretation of literature and won state and national awards for poetry reading. A voice actor and singer for over a decade, Amy has narrated many interactive children's books and provided character voices for toys and video games. Amy's work has been featured in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, AudioFile magazine, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal.

Armando Duran has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

Tom Bromhead is a uniquely international voice artist. He now lives in Los Angeles, but having grown up in Australia and England, as well as being a musician, has given him an ear for accents and characters. He has appeared in commercials with Jane Lynch and Mena Suvari and performed voices for animation and video games, including Skylanders, Transformers, and Call of Duty. Tom performed as a stand-up comedian, traveling as far afield as Kuala Lumpur, Darwin, and London. He studied at Richmond Drama School in London and Second City in Los Angeles.

Mark Peckham is an actor and director based in Rhode Island. In addition to working with Trinity Rep, Virginia Stage Co., and many Boston-area theaters, he was the voice of Joseph Smith in the award-winning PBS documentary American Prophet with Gregory Peck.

Mia Chiaromonte is a Southern California native with a BA in theater from the University of California, San Diego. She has worked extensively as an actor, singer, and audiobook narrator, and her voice has been heard across the country on various radio commercials for clients including BMW and Time Warner Cable.

Paul Michael Garcia, an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and former company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, received his classical training in theater from Southern Oregon University, where he worked as an actor, director, and designer.

Christine Williams is a singer and actor based in Ashland, Oregon. Her performance credits include productions at regional theaters and on concert stages across the country and around the world, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Barbican Centre in London to the Aspen Music Festival and the Grotowski Institute in Poland.

Melanie Ewbank has performed in numerous film and regional theater productions. She also appeared on the Lifetime television series Strong Medicine.

Andrew McCarthy is a writer, actor, and director. He is an editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler and has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, Afar, and others. His book The Longest Journey Home was named a best book of 2012 by the Financial Times (London). He has won six Lowell Thomas Awards, and the Society of American Travel Writers named him Travel Journalist of the Year in 2010. He made his acting debut at nineteen and has appeared in dozens of films, including Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, and The Joy Luck Club. He lives in New York.

Diane Johnson is an American-born novelist and essayist. A two-time finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in three different genres-essay, biography, and fiction-she is the author of a dozen novels, including Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L'Affaire. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and splits her time between San Francisco and Paris.

Patrick Lawlor, an award-winning narrator, is also an accomplished stage actor, director, and combat choreographer. He has worked extensively off Broadway and has been an actor and stuntman in both film and television. He has been an Audie Award finalist multiple times and has garnered several AudioFile Earphones Awards, a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, and many starred audio reviews from Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews.

Joyce Maynard first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life in 1973, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for the New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose Domestic Affairs column appeared in more than fifty papers nationwide, and a regular contributor to NPR. Her writing has also been published in national magazines, including O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; the New York Times magazine; USA Weekly; and many more. Her novel The Usual Rules-a story about surviving loss-has been a favorite of book club audiences of all ages and was chosen by the American Library Association as one of the ten best books for young readers for 2003. Joyce also runs the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in Guatemala, founded in 2002.

Shaun Grindell, actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator, was born and raised in Southampton, England. His training includes the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in London. He has been seen on stage in London and Las Vegas.

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine Best Of Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both Off-Broadway in New York and Off-Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.

Stephen R. Thorne, winner of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration, is a professional actor and member of the resident acting company at Providence's esteemed Trinity Repertory Company, where he has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad.

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.

Adam Verner is a stage, film, television, and voice actor and an Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator. He holds a BS in theater arts from Bradley University and an MFA from Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Michael Kramer is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner, a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, and recipient of a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an actor and director in the Washington, DC, area, where he is active in the area's theater scene and has appeared in productions at the Shakespeare Theatre, the Kennedy Center, and Theater J.

Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.

Caroline Shaffer is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. A former company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for nineteen years, she received an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater.

Bob Souer is a full-time professional storyteller, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has narrated broadcast and nonbroadcast projects for corporations and ministries across North America. His voice has been heard on PBS, the History Channel, the Military Channel, and many other networks. He has also narrated radio and television programs for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, D. James Kennedy Ministries, SIM, and Compassion International.

John McLain is an actor, professional voice talent, and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. On stage, he has appeared in The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Amahl & the Night Visitors, and The Music Man.

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Angela Brazil is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory.

Kate Reading is an Audie Award-winning narrator and has received dozens of Earphones Awards. She has been named by AudioFile magazine as a Voice of the Century, as well as the Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy in 2008 and 2009 and Best Voice in Biography & Culture in 2010. She is also a theater actor in the Washington, DC, area and has been a member of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company since 1987. Her work onstage has been recognized by the Helen Hayes Awards Society, among others.

Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flair for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013.

Pam Ward, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress' Talking Books program. The fact that she can work with Blackstone Audio from the beauty of the mountains of Southern Oregon is an unexpected bonus.