Amanda Peters and Roxanna Asgarian are the winners of this year’s Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence, given annually by the American Library Association for outstanding achievements in fiction and nonfiction.
Peters won the fiction medal for The Berry Pickers, her novel about the aftermath of the disappearance of a 4-year-old Mi’kmaq girl in Maine. The book previously won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize; in a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised it as “a quiet and poignant debut from a writer to watch.”
Asgarian was named the winner of the nonfiction prize for We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, her account of the 2018 Hart family murders in California. Jennifer Hart drove her SUV off a cliff, killing her wife, Sarah Hart, and their six Black adopted children. A Kirkus reviewer called the book “a sobering call to action demanding reform of the child-protective and foster-care regimes.”
Aryssa Damron, chair of the selection committee for the medals, said in a statement, “Amanda Peters’ stunning prose and evocative narrative enraptured us with the grief and longing of her characters. Roxanna Asgarian’s blending of journalism, narrative nonfiction, and heartbreak tears back the veil on the child removal systems in the United States.”
The Carnegie Medals were established in 2012. Previous winners include Donna Tartt for The Goldfinch, Sally Mann for Hold Still, James McBride for Deacon King Kong, and Ed Yong for An Immense World.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
