The Carnegie Medals Short List

It’s TIMEEEEEEE!

As many of you know, I have spent the past year reading and reading and reading and reading some more as the chair of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. Our LONGLIST of 45 amazing title was announced in October, and you can read about it here.

Yesterday, on my birthday (very serendipitous), our SHORT list dropped. We narrowed it down from 45 titles across both lists to 3 nonfiction and 3 fiction titles, and I am SO Proud of this short list. These are some of the best books of 2023, and our committee enjoyed them all so much. We know they will resonate with adult readers deeply and cannot wait to reveal our WINNERS to you in January 2024!

You can read the full press release here, but the highlights are:

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2024 Shortlist

• “The Berry Pickers,” by Amanda Peters. Catapult. In 1962, an Indigenous Mi’kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, this braided novel fascinates. While little is easy for Peters’ characters, in the end, for all of them, there is hope.
• “Denison Avenue,” by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. ECW Press.
  In a mixed-media narrative saturated with a sense of poignancy and grief, Wong Cho Sum navigates the sudden death of her husband by a hit-and-run driver. As an “invisible” elderly observer, she compares the old Chinatown she remembers with this new, slowly gentrifying one. Innes’ detailed and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations are eye-catching complements to Wong’s writing.
• “Let Us Descend,” by Jesmyn Ward. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
  Sold away from her mother, teenage Annis, daughter of a Black mother and the white man who enslaved them, must endure a grueling march to the slave markets of New Orleans with only her wits and her mother’s ivory awl to help her survive. Ward’s vivid imagery and emotionally resonant prose convey the horrors of chattel slavery in stark, unforgettable detail.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2024 Shortlist

• “The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration,” by Jake Bittle. Simon & Schuster.
  This multifaceted examination considers numerous communities that have been wiped out by changing weather patterns and foretells a future filled with additional displacements. Environmental journalist Bittle uses a combination of science reporting and individuals’ stories to explain the fates of towns deemed uninhabitable and ends with a plea for comprehensive environmental policy change and urgent action.
• “The Talk,” by Darrin Bell. Henry Holt and Company.
  In 2019, Bell became the first Black editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize. In this brilliant graphic memoir, Bell’s growth from a trusting child afraid of dogs to an esteemed, nationally syndicated cartoonist is a marvel to witness through his spectacular panels and pages. A must-read manifesto against racist brutality.
• “We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America,” by Roxanna Asgarian. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  Investigative reporter Asgarian’s years of work getting to know the birth families of six children killed by their adoptive parents in 2018 uncovered a devastating web of intergenerational poverty, violence, and wrenching separations. She exposes the tragedy of what happened and the ongoing, insupportable failings of the foster system.