The American Library Association has revealed the finalists for its Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.
Percival Everett made the fiction shortlist for James, his reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of the enslaved Jim. The novel previously won the Kirkus Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Booker Prize.
Joining Everett on the fiction shortlist are Kaveh Akbar for Martyr!, also a National Book Award finalist, and Jiaming Tang for Cinema Love.
Adam Higginbotham was named a nonfiction finalist for Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, which won this year’s Kirkus Prize; he previously won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Emily Nussbaum made the shortlist for Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, as did Kevin Fedarko for A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon.
The Andrew Carnegie Medals were established in 2012. Previous winners include Anthony Doerr for All the Light We Cannot See, Amanda Peters for The Berry Pickers, Matthew Desmond for Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and Hanif Abdurraqib for A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.
The winners of this year’s awards will be announced on Jan. 26, 2025.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
