# Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction

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

## Winners and finalists
### Fiction

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

### Nonfiction

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