Courtney B. Vance to narrate audio edition of prize-winning W.E.B. Du Bois biography

NEW YORK (AP) — Award-winning actor Courtney B. Vance will be narrating the first ever-audio edition of one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the past 30 years, David Levering Lewis’ two-volume work on the scholar, author and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois.

The first volume is scheduled for June 17.

“As a lover of history, I was drawn to W.E.B. Du Bois’s award-winning biography,” Vance said in a statement released Wednesday by Simon & Schuster Audio. “Having the chance to reintroduce his legacy to audiophiles by narrating his life story has been an honor and true passion project for me.”

Lewis received Pulitzer Prizes for each of his Du Bois books: “W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919,” published in 1993, and “W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963,” which came out in 2000. The historian said in a statement that he was gratified to have his books available in audio.

“I can hardly believe this has come to pass,” he said. “Listen to Courtney B. Vance and you shall hear the spoken wisdom of an American colossus, a prophetic man of color in whose 95 years all intellectual, political, economic, and racial choices were profoundly explored.”