ALA Announces Shortlist for 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals

The American Library Association (ALA) revealed the six books shortlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction in an announcement on Wednesday, October 26. The annual prize is awarded for the previous year’s best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the United States.

The 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction shortlist titles are:

Nonfiction 2017 Shortlist

• The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (Crown)
• Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips (W.W. Norton)

Fiction 2017 Shortlist

• Moonglow by Michael Chabon (Harper)
• Swing Time by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press)
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

The winners will be announced at the Reference and User Services Association’s (RUSA) Book and Media Awards event at the ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 22, 2017. Carnegie Medal winners each receive $5,000, and the four finalists each receive $1,500. All finalists will be honored during ALA’s 2017 Annual Conference in Chicago from June 22-27, 2017. 

Established in 2012, the Medals are made possible, in part, by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and are co-sponsored by ALA’s Booklist and RUSA. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by the ALA and reflect the judgment of library professionals who work closely with adult readers.

Annotations and more information on the finalists and the awards can be found here. Book cover artwork is available for download here.