Free-of-Charge Audio Literary Works

"The mission of Assistive Media is to heighten the educational, cultural, and quality-of-living standard for people with disabilities and help achieve independence and become better integrated within the mainstream of society and community life in general. "

AM originally formed in 1996 to create spoken-word recordings of material printed in inaccessible formats. Using volunteer readers, they distributed these recordings to libraries for the blind. With the growth of the internet population and the advent of RealMedia® (software that allows internet users to easily access long audio files), Assistive Media launched its service into the web.

Anyone who has access to the internet and a computer with a sound card can now enjoy AM's eclectic mix of interesting and educational articles originally published by independent writers or in reputable magazines like The New Yorker, Harper's, Wired, Scientific American, Atlantic Monthly, and more. All of AM's audio files are copyrighted and used by permission of the copyright holder. Podcasts are also available from their site for any portible MP3 player.

Assistive Media
400 Maynard Street, Suite 404
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2434
Phone: 734-332-0369
Email: info@assistivemedia.org
Web: http://www.assistivemedia.org

Wired For Books

In order to use this site you need to have RealPlayer which is a free download, you will find the link to download Real Player near the top of the page.

Why would you want to have RealPlayer for this site? Well because you get to listen to famous, and not so famous, people read works of literature.

In the "Kid's Corner" you can listen to the tale of Peter Rabbit, and right next door you could listen to Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland. Not to forget great literary works like Macbeth, The Illiad or the The Aeneid.

There is also poetry from "classic English poems, including poetry by Blake, Burns, Byron, Donne, Herbert, Hunt, Keats, and Shakespeare," to the "Den of Lions" poems, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Not to mention all the wonderful non-fiction and fiction that you can listen to! This site gets an A++ in my opinion for being so diverse, and for bringing so many wonderful poems, and stories together in one place for people to listen to. Wired For Books http://wiredforbooks.org/ .

Lit2Go:MP3 Stories and Poems

Courtesy of Florida's Educational Clearinghouse, here's a website with even more audio for your listening pleasure. Browse the collection by author or title. Each passage comes with an abstract, citation, playing time, word count, and, in some cases, a suggested reading strategy.

Click this link to visit Lit2Go.

Visions of Poets

From the website:

“Listening to a poet reading and discussing his or her work will almost always lead to new insights about a poem. In the Poet Vision Video Series you can see and hear some of the country's most eminent poets, past and present. Allen Ginsberg, Robert Penn Warren, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton and Stanley Kunitz are among the 12 poets in this series. Five of the 12 have served as Poet Laureate of the United States (the Poet Laureate is selected by the Librarian of Congress).”

Click this link to visit the Visions of Poets page at the Library of Congress website.