ALA Announces Shortlist for 2014 Carnegie Medals for Fiction and Nonfiction

On Monday, the American Library Association (ALA) announced the six titles shortlisted for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The shortlist and eventual winners are chosen by a seven-member committee of library professionals from across the country from the best fiction and nonfiction books for adults written in the previous year and published in the U.S.

Like the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards, which are uniquely respected in youth literature, the Carnegie Medals’ strong library connection sets the finalists and winners apart and makes them ideal for promotion in bookstore programming and marketing efforts highlighting outstanding titles. Interest in the awards has grown each year since their launch in 2012, with last year’s awards generating 405,000 web placements.

The three finalists for this year’s Carnegie Medal for Fiction are:

• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• Claire of the Sea Light, by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
• The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group)

The three finalists for the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction are:

• 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 Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster)

The two winning titles will be announced on Saturday, June 28, at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas. Each winning author will receive $5,000 and the four finalists will each receive $1,500.

Booksellers are encouraged to help generate interest in the titles through their social media channels, websites, newsletters, and other communications. To join the wider Twitter conversation, people should use the hashtag #ala_carnegie.

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.

For more information including past long- and shortlists and downloadable bookmarks and tabletop posters, visit the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction website.