Percival Everett's 'James' awarded Carnegie Medal for fiction

NEW YORK — 

For writer Percival Everett, libraries person agelong been a root of cognition and find and pleasure, adjacent of the forbidden kind.

"I retrieve making friends astatine property 13 with the librarian astatine the University of South Carolina, and she utilized to fto maine spell done the stacks erstwhile I wasn't expected to," Everett, who spent portion of his puerility successful Columbia, said during a telephone interrogation Sunday.

"One of the fantastic things astir libraries is that erstwhile you're looking for 1 book, it's surrounded by different books that whitethorn not beryllium connected to it. That's what you get (online) with links, but (in libraries) nary one's decided what the links are."

Everett's latest grant comes from the country's nationalist libraries. On Sunday, the American Library Association announced that Everett's "James" was this year's victor of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence successful Fiction, which includes a $5,000 currency award. Kevin Fedarko's "A Walk successful the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure successful the Grand Canyon" was chosen for nonfiction.

Everett's acclaimed reworking of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from the position of Jim, Huck Finn's enslaved companion, has already received the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize and is simply a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. "James" has adjacent topped The New York Times fabrication hardcover list, a uncommon feat successful caller years for a literate enactment that wasn't a large publication nine prime oregon movie tie-in.

"Percival Everett has written a modern masterpiece, a beauteous and important enactment that offers a caller position from the eyes of a classical character," Allison Escoto, seat of the award's enactment committee, said successful a statement. "Kevin Fedarko's unforgettable travel done the otherworldly depths of the Grand Canyon shows america the triumphs and pitfalls of exploration and illuminates the galore captious lessons we tin each larn from our precious earthy world."

Fedarko is simply a erstwhile Time mag analogous whose enactment besides has appeared successful The New York Times and Esquire. A Pittsburgh autochthonal fascinated by distant places, Fedarko has a agelong past with libraries — Carnegie libraries. He remembers visiting 2 portion increasing up, notably 1 successful the suburb of Oakmont adjacent the hairdressing salon his parents ran. He would work biographies of humanities figures from George Washington to Daniel Boone, and different deliberation of libraries arsenic "important threads moving done his life," windows to a "wider world."

Now a nonmigratory of Flagstaff, Arizona, Fedarko says that helium relied successful portion connected the room astatine the adjacent Northern Arizona University field for some "A Walk successful the Park" and its predecessor, besides astir the Grand Canyon, "The Emerald Mile."

"The room has an important and unsocial postulation astir the Grand Canyon, and it's the backbone of the benignant of past that helps signifier the model of some books," helium says. "Neither of them could person been done without the library."

Previous winners of the medals, established successful 2012 with a assistance from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, includes Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch," Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" and Doris Kearns Goodwin's "The Bully Pulpit."

This year's finalists too "James" successful the fabrication class were Jiaming Tang's "Cinema Love" and Kavin Akbar's "Martyr!"

Adam Higginbotham's "Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster connected the Edge of Space" and Emily Nussbaum's "Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV" were the nonfiction runners-up.

All 3 fabrication nominees were published by Penguin Random House and each 3 nonfiction finalists by Simon & Schuster.