The American Library Association has announced its winners of the Carnegie medals for literary excellence, awarding McBride in the fiction category and Giggs in nonfiction. (Riverhead Books, left, and Simon & Schuster via AP) This year’s winners of the Carnegie medals for fiction, and nonfiction presented by the American Library Association have each checked out a few books in their time.
I work from libraries a lot and my wallet is full of library cards says Rebecca Giggs an Australian author whose Fathoms The World in the Whale received the nonfiction prize Thursday.
The winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence have been announced: “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride (fiction) & “Fathoms: The World in the Whale” by @rebeccagiggs (nonfiction). https://t.co/tKFbDgGKhi @PRHLibrary @riverheadbooks @simonschuster #ALA_Carnegie #ALAbma pic.twitter.com/cX41sHdRNT
— American Library Association (@ALALibrary) February 4, 2021
James McBride the fiction winner for Deacon King Kong has library cards in four different cities and wrote parts of his novel in branches in New York City and Philadelphia.
In New York you can get anything you want but it takes longer because you cant leave the library with them But in Philly you can explained McBride whose novel last year was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club
With a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York the library association established the award in 2012 with winners in each category receiving 5000 Previous honorees include Donna Tartt Doris Kearns Goodwin and Colson Whitehead.
McBride and Giggs each have strong childhood memories of libraries McBride a longtime New Yorker would visit them often because they were a safe space and because his family couldnt afford to buy many books Giggs remembers her mother getting into aerobics in a big way and a few nights a week dropping off her and her sister at a library next door to the workout space.
Just … blown away by this news🏅Thank you ALA. Breaking off a piece of this medal for my golden editors @simonsdaughter at @SimonBooks and Marika Webb Pullman at @scribepub, and wandering through the morning with a look of stunned delight. https://t.co/JbErrxOV4t
— Rebecca Giggs (@rebeccagiggs) February 4, 2021
Ghost stories were a favorite
Especially true histories of the paranormal with photographs of poltergeists that were in fact only smudges or the developers accidental thumbprints in atticwindows and on staircases she says Back then as now I was interested in the boundarylines between fact documentation and belief _ a theme that threads through Fathoms which is as much about the myths whales sustain as the science of animallife in the oceans of the 21st century
