Barbra Streisand Memoir ‘My Name Is Barbra’ Wins Best Audiobook at Audie Awards: Where to Listen

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Barbra Streisand‘s memoir, My Name Is Barbra, picked up two Audie Awards during Tuesday’s ceremony (March 4). The Audie Awards, held by the Audio Publishers Association, have been celebrating the best audiobooks since 1996. My Name Is Barbra won the marquee Audiobook of the Year award and the best Autobiography/Memoir award.

The famously reclusive Streisand was not on hand to accept the award, so Karen Dziekonskiof of Penguin Random House Audio accepted it on her behalf. Other notable celebrities to win awards included Kate McKinnon and Whoopi Goldberg, while horror legend Stephen King won in the Short Stories/Collections category. You can see the complete list of winners on the organization’s website.

Streisand narrated the autobiography herself and competed in the Audiobook of the Year category against the Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo-narrated George Orwell’s 1984, Playground by environmentalist novelist Richard Powers, Poor Deer

by Claire Oshetsky, and The Sing Sing Files. My Name Is Barbra also won the award in the autobiography/memoir category, competing against books by Elton John, Sebastian Junger, Salman Rushdie, and Kelly Bishop.

Streisand’s memoir was famously decades in the making. Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, then an editor at Doubleday, approached her about writing a book in the mid-80s, and Streisand first considered penning a memoir in 1999. It wasn’t until 2015 that a formal deal on a memoir was inked for a 2017 publication date. It didn’t get published until 2023, though the long lead time was not due to a lack of things to say; the hardcover print runs nearly 1,000 pages, while the audiobook is 48 hours.

In the book, Streisand details her life, career, and upbringing, including the unconventional spelling of her name, explaining, “I never really liked the name Barbara… And then there was the question of Streisand. Various people, like casting agents, were always suggesting I change it. They wanted something simpler … Barbara Strand or Sands … but that felt phony … Then it occurred to me that I could just take out that middle a in Barbara. Now I’d be Barbra … that was different and unique.”