Six books (3 fiction, 3 nonfiction) have been selected as finalists for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The two medal winners will be announced by 2024 selection committee chair Aryssa Damron at the Reference and User Services Association’s Book and Media Awards livestreamed event, premiering during LibLearnX in Baltimore on Saturday, January 20th at 9:45 a.m. Eastern time. A celebratory event, including presentations by the winners and a featured speaker, will take place at the 2024 ALA Annual Conference in June 2024 in San Diego. Carnegie Medal winners each receive $5,000.
Share your favorite Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Shortlist titles on social media using the #ALA_Carnegie hashtag!
SHORTLIST
FICTION FINALISTS
The Berry Pickers
Amanda Peters
(Catapult)
In 1962, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, this braided novel fascinates. While little is easy for Peters’ characters, in the end, for all of them, there is hope.
Denison Avenue
Christina Wong and Daniel Innes
(ECW Press)
In a mixed-media narrative saturated with a sense of poignancy and grief, Wong Cho Sum navigates the sudden death of her husband by a hit-and-run driver. As an “invisible” elderly observer, she compares the old Chinatown she remembers with this new, slowly gentrifying one. Innes’ detailed and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations are eye-catching complements to Wong’s writing.
Let Us Descend
Jesmyn Ward
(Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.)
Sold away from her mother, teenage Annis, daughter of a Black mother and the white man who enslaved them, must endure a grueling march to the slave markets of New Orleans with only her wits and her mother’s ivory awl to help her survive. Ward’s vivid imagery and emotionally resonant prose convey the horrors of chattel slavery in stark, unforgettable detail.
NONFICTION FINALISTS
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
Jake Bittle
(Simon & Schuster)
This multifaceted examination considers numerous communities that have been wiped out by changing weather patterns and foretells a future filled with additional displacements. Environmental journalist Bittle uses a combination of science reporting and individuals’ stories to explain the fates of towns deemed uninhabitable, and ends with a plea for comprehensive environmental policy change and urgent action.
The Talk
Darrin Bell
(Henry Holt and Company)
In 2019, Bell became the first Black editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this brilliant graphic memoir, Bell’s growth from a trusting child afraid of dogs to an esteemed, nationally syndicated cartoonist is a marvel to witness through his spectacular panels and pages. A must-read manifesto against racist brutality.
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
Roxanna Asgarian
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Investigative reporter Asgarian’s years of work getting to know the birth families of six children killed by their adoptive parents in 2018 uncovered a devastating web of intergenerational poverty, violence, and wrenching separations. She exposes the tragedy of what happened and the ongoing, insupportable failings of the foster system.
LONGLIST
FICTION
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Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame.
Chain-Gang All-Stars.
(Pantheon)
Allen, Jeffery Renard.
Fat Time and Other Stories.
(Graywolf)
Blaché, Sin and Helen Macdonald.
Prophet.
(Grove)
Brinkley, Jamel.
Witness.
(Farrar)
Chun, Ye.
Straw Dogs of the Universe.
(Catapult)
Cosby, S. A.
All the Sinners Bleed.
(Flatiron)
Daniell, Sebastián Martínez. Translated by Jennifer Croft.
Two Sherpas.
(Charco)
Earling, Debra Magpie.
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea.
(Milkweed)
Heng, Rachel.
The Great Reclamation.
(Riverhead)
Herawi, Siamak. Translated by Sara Khalili.
Tali Girls.
(Archipelago)
Huang, S. L.
The Water Outlaws.
(Tordotcom)
Innes, Daniel and Christina Wong.
Denison Avenue.
(ECW)
Labatut, Benjamin.
The MANIAC.
(Penguin)
Lee, Helen Elaine.
Pomegranate.
(Atria)
Norris, Kelsey.
House Gone Quiet.
(Scribner)
Peters, Amanda.
The Berry Pickers.
(Catapult)
Pin, Cecile.
Wandering Souls.
(Holt)
Qian, Cleo.
Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go.
(Tin House)
Shroff, Parini.
The Bandit Queens.
(Ballantine)
Sze-Lorrain, Fiona.
Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories.
(Scribner)
Ward, Jesmyn.
Let Us Descend.
(Scribner)
NONFICTION
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Asgarian, Roxanna.
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.
(Farrar)
Bagby, Meredith.
The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel.
(Morrow)
Bailar, Schuyler.
He/She/They: How We Talk about Gender and Why It Matters.
(Hachette Go)
Bell, Darrin.
The Talk.
(Holt)
Berg, Scott W.
The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul.
(Pantheon)
Bittle, Jake.
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration.
(Simon & Schuster)
Cooper, Christian.
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World.
(Random)
Desmond, Matthew.
Poverty, By America.
(Crown)
Egan, Timothy.
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.
(Viking)
Habib, Shahnaz.
Airplane Mode: An Irrelevant History of Travel.
(Catapult)
Higa, Susumu. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.
Okinawa.
(Fantagraphics)
Holley, Santi Elijah.
An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created.
(Mariner)
Leland, Andrew.
The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight.
(Penguin)
Lowery, Wesley.
American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress.
(Mariner)
Nguyen, Viet Thanh.
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial.
(Grove)
Nuila, Ricardo.
The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine.
(Scribner)
Sharkey, Erin.
A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars.
(Milkweed)
Sevigny, Melissa L.
Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.
(Norton)
Swarns, Rachel L.
The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church.
(Random)
Tobar, Héctor.
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”
(Farrar/MCD)
Vanderbes, Jennifer.
Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims.
(Random)
Wilbur, Matika.
Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America.
(Ten Speed)
Winston, Ali and Darwin BondGraham.
The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover Up in Oakland.
(Atria)
Woo, Ilyon.
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom.
(Simon & Schuster)