The ALA invites BEA attendees to visit the Booklist booth (1645) to preview the display of shortlisted titles for this year’s Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The awards will be announced June 27 as part of ALA’s annual conference in San Francisco. Each winning author gets a check for $5,000 with medal. Both 2014 winners, Donna Tartt and Doris Kearns Goodwin, attended the event and spent time with librarians.
The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence were established in 2012 as the first single-book awards given by the ALA for adult books, and the shortlist and winners are chosen by a panel of library professionals, three Booklist editors, three members of the Reference and User Services Association Notable Book Council, and a representative of the American Booksellers Association. This year’s bookseller representative is Betsy Burton, owner of the King’s English in Salt Lake City and incoming president of the ABA board. Cathy Langer, lead buyer for Tattered Cover Bookstores in Denver, joins the 2016 selection committee.
The 2015 shortlisted titles for nonfiction are Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau), The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt), and Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David, by Lawrence Wright (Knopf). The 2015 shortlisted titles for fiction are All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner), Nora Webster, by Colm Tóibín (Scribner), and On Such a Full Sea, by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books).
Free mini-posters promoting the 2015 shortlisted titles will be available at the Booklist booth, as well as at the shortlisted publishers’ booths.
This article appeared in the May 27, 2015 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.
