2014 Carnegie Fiction and Nonfiction Medal Winners Announced

Donna Tartt and Doris Kearns Goodwin have been named the 2014 winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, respectively. Tartt won the Fiction medal for her novel The Goldfinch, published by Little, Brown and Company.  Kearns Goodwin won the Nonfiction medal for The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, published by Simon & Schuster.

The winning titles were announced last weekend, at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

In April, ALA announced the six titles shortlisted for the 2014 medals as chosen by a seven-member committee of library professionals from the best fiction and nonfiction books for adults written in the previous year and published in the U.S.

The other finalists were:

Fiction

• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• Claire of the Sea Light, by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

Nonfiction

• On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand Year History, by Nicholas A. Basbanes (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink (Crown Publishers/Random House)

The winners will receive $5,000 and the two finalists in each category will receive $1,500. The awards are co-sponsored by Booklist and RUSA (ALA’s Reference and User Services Association) and are funded through a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The shortlist was drawn from the previous year’s Booklist Editors’ Choice and RUSA Notable Books lists.