Percival Everett and Kevin Fedarko have won the American Library Association’s 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence, given annually to “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year.”
Everett took home the fiction award for James, his retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the enslaved Jim. The book has already won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Booker Prize, and is shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Fedarko was named the winner of the nonfiction prize for A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, which recounts his journey with a friend traversing the Arizona landmark. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “vivid armchair travel through a haunting and forbidding landscape.”
Allison Escoto, chair of the selection committee for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals, said in a statement, “Percival Everett has written a modern masterpiece, a beautiful and important work that offers a fresh perspective from the eyes of a classic character. Kevin Fedarko’s unforgettable journey through the otherworldly depths of the Grand Canyon shows us the triumphs and pitfalls of exploration and illuminates the many vital lessons we can all learn from our precious natural world.”
The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence were established in 2012. Previous winners include Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Sympathizer, Amanda Peters for The Berry Pickers, Bryan Stevenson for Just Mercy, and Roxanna Asgarian for We Were Once a Family.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
