Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

For the British award, see Carnegie Medal (literary award).

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction were established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year.^[1] They are named in honor of nineteenth-century American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in recognition of his deep belief in the power of books and learning to change the world.^[2]

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction
Awarded for	Best adult fiction & non-fiction
Sponsored by	Carnegie Corporation (main sponsor) Booklist (ALA co-sponsor) Reference and User Services Association (ALA co-sponsor)
Location	ALA annual conference
Country	USA
Presented by	American Library Association
Hosted by	American Library Association
Reward(s)	$5,000 (winner) $1,500 (finalists)
First award	2012
Website	www.ala.org/awardsgrants/carnegieadult

The award is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and administered by the American Library Association (ALA).^[1] Booklist and the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) cosponsor the awards.^[1] The shortlist and winners are selected by a seven-member selection committee of library experts who work with adult readers.^[1] The annually appointed selection committee includes a chair, three Booklist editors or contributors, and three former members of RUSA CODES Notable Books Council.^[1]

The winners, one each for fiction and nonfiction, are announced at an event in June at the American Library Association Annual Conference; winning authors receive a $5,000 cash award, and two finalists in each category receive $1,500.^[1]

Winners and finalists

Fiction

Winners and finalists in fiction

Year	Winner	Work	Finalists	Ref.
2012	Anne Enright	The Forgotten Waltz	Winner	[3][4]
	Russell Banks	Lost Memory of Skin	Finalist	[3][4]
	Karen Russell	Swamplandia!
2013	Richard Ford	Canada	Winner	[5][6][7]
	Junot Díaz	This Is How You Lose Her	Finalist	[5][6][7]
	Louise Erdrich	The Round House
2014	Donna Tartt	The Goldfinch	Winner	[8]
	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie	Americanah	Finalist	[8]
	Edwidge Danticat	Claire of the Sea Light
2015	Anthony Doerr	All the Light We Cannot See	Winner	[9][10]
	Chang-Rae Lee	On Such a Full Sea	Finalist	[9][10]
	Colm Tóibín	Nora Webster
2016	Viet Thanh Nguyen	The Sympathizer	Winner	[11][12]
	Jim Shepard	The Book of Aron	Finalist	[11][12]
	Hanya Yanagihara	A Little Life
2017	Colson Whitehead	The Underground Railroad	Winner	[13][14]
	Michael Chabon	Moonglow	Finalist	[13][14]
	Zadie Smith	Swing Time
2018	Jennifer Egan	Manhattan Beach	Winner	[15][16]
	Jesmyn Ward	Sing, Unburied, Sing	Finalist	[15][16]
	George Saunders	Lincoln in the Bardo
2019	Rebecca Makkai	The Great Believers	Winner	[17][18]
	Tommy Orange	There There	Finalist	[17][18]
	Esi Edugyan	Washington Black
2020	Valeria Luiselli	Lost Children Archive	Winner	[19][20]
	Myla Goldberg	Feast Your Eyes	Finalist	[19][20]
	Ta-Nehisi Coates	The Water Dancer
2021	James McBride	Deacon King Kong	Winner	[21][22]
	Ayad Akhtar	Homeland Elegies	Finalist	[21][22]
	Megha Majumdar	A Burning
2022	Tom Lin	The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu	Winner	[23][24]
	Kirstin Valdez Quade	The Five Wounds	Finalist	[23][24]
	Lauren Groff	Matrix
2023	Julie Otsuka	The Swimmers	Winner	[25]
	David Santos Donaldson	Greenland	Finalist	[25]
	Morgan Talty	Night of the Living Rez
2024	Amanda Peters	The Berry Pickers	Winner	[26]
	Christina Wong and Daniel Innes	Denison Avenue	Finalist	[27]
	Jesmyn Ward	Let Us Descend

Nonfiction

Winners and finalists in nonfiction

Year	Winner	Work	Finalists	Refs.
2012	Robert K. Massie	Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman	Winner	[3][4]
	James Gleick	The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood	Finalist	[3][4]
	Manning Marable	Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
2013	Timothy Egan	Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis	Winner	[5][6][7]
	Jill Lepore	The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death	Finalist	[5][6][7]
	David Quammen	Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
2014	Doris Kearns Goodwin	The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism	Winner	[8]
	Nicholas A. Basbanes	On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History	Finalist	[8]
	Sheri Fink	Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
2015	Bryan Stevenson	Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption	Winner	[9][10]
	Elizabeth Kolbert	The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History	Finalist	[9][10]
	Lawrence Wright	Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David
2016	Sally Mann	Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs	Winner	[11][12]
	Helen Macdonald	H is for Hawk	Finalist	[11][12]
	Andrea Wulf	The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
2017	Matthew Desmond	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City	Winner	[13][14]
	Patricia Bell-Scott	The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship	Finalist
	Patrick Phillips	Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America
2018	No award given A			[15][28]
	Daniel Ellsberg	The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner	Finalist	[15][28]
	David Grann	Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
2019	Kiese Laymon	Heavy: An American Memoir	Winner	[17][18]
	Beth Macy	Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America	Finalist	[17][18]
	Francisco Cantú	The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
2020	Adam Higginbotham	Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster	Winner	[19][20]
	Maria Popova	Figuring	Finalist	[19][20]
	David Treuer	The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
2021	Rebecca Giggs	Fathoms: The World in the Whale	Winner	[21][22]
	Claudia Rankine	Just Us: An American Conversation	Finalist	[21][22]
	Natasha Trethewey	Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
2022	Hanif Abdurraqib	A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance	Winner	[23][24]
	Keisha N. Blain Ibram X. Kendi	Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019	Finalist	[23][24]
	Kristen Radtke	Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness
2023	Ed Yong	An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us	Winner	[25]
	Margo Jefferson	Constructing a Nervous System	Finalist
	Rachel E. Gross	Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage
2024	Roxanna Asgarian	We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America	Winner	[26]
	Jake Bittle	The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration	Finalist	[27]
	Darrin Bell	The Talk

Notes

• ^A The 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction was originally awarded to Sherman Alexie for his book, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, but Alexie declined the award amid sexual harassment allegations. In response, ALA said in a statement that "We acknowledge his decision and will not award the Carnegie nonfiction medal in 2018."^[29]