A joint initiative of Carnegie Corporation of New York and the American Library Association.

Awards Shortlist

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2013 Finalists:

Junot Díaz. This Is How You Lose Her,
published by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Fast paced and street-talking tough, Díaz’s stories unveil lives shadowed by prejudice and poverty and bereft of reliable love and trust. These are precarious, unappreciated lives in which intimacy is a lost art, masculinity a parody, and kindness, reason, and hope struggle to survive like seedlings in a war zone.
Louise Erdrich. The Round House,
published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

In her fourteenth novel, Erdrich writes in the voice of a man reliving the fateful summer of his thirteenth year. Erdrich’s intimacy with her characters energizes this tale of hate crimes and vengeance, her latest immersion in the Ojibwe and white community she has been writing about for more than two decades.
Richard Ford. Canada,
published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
“First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed.” So begins Ford’s riveting novel, an atmospheric and haunting tale of family, folly, exile, and endurance told in the precise and searching voice of Dell Parsons, a young man forced to navigate a harsh world.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2013 Finalists:

Timothy Egan. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis,
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Popular historian Egan turns the life and work of master photographer Edward Curtis into a gripping and heroic story of one man’s commitment to the three-decade project that ultimately resulted in The North American Indian, a 20-volume collection of words and pictures documenting the Native American peoples of the American West.
Jill Lepore. The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death,
published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
From board games, including one called The Mansion of Happiness, to public-library children’s rooms to cryogenics, historian Lepore’s episodic inquiry into our evolving perceptions of life and death is full of surprises, irreverent wit, and arresting perceptions.
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,
published by W. W. Norton & Company.
Science writer Quammen schools readers in the fascinating if alarming facts about zoonotic diseases—animal infections that sicken humans, such as rabies and Ebola. Drawing on the dramatic history of virology, he profiles brave viral sleuths and recounts his own hair-raising field adventures. A vital, in-depth account offered in the hope that knowledge will engender preparedness.