Carnegie Medals go to Anthony Doerr, Bryan Stevenson

Anthony Doerr has been awarded the Carnegie Medal for Fiction for his bestselling novel “All the Light We Cannot See.” Bryan Stevenson was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction for his book on his experience with inequities in the American criminal justice system, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.” The Carnegie Medal winners each receive $5,000.

Established in 2012, the Carnegie Medals for Fiction and Nonfiction are an adult accompaniment to the longstanding children’s book prizes awarded annually by the American Library Association. The book-cover medallions for those award winners and runners-up have come to signify excellence in children’s literature.

Doerr also received the Pulitzer Prize for “All the Light We Cannot See,” a story set in World War II that tracks the lives of a blind French girl, a young German soldier and those pursuing an invaluable lost jewel.

Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. His work there has brought him many awards, including a MacArthur “genius” grant, a Lannan Foundation Prize for Human and Civil Rights, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award and the NAACP William Robert Ming Advocacy Award. “Just Mercy” is his first book.

The finalists for the Carnegie Medal for Fiction were “Nora Webster” by Colm Tóibín and “On Such a Full Sea” by Chang-rae Lee.

The finalists for the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction were “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert and “Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David” by Lawrence Wright. All finalists receive $1,500.

Previous winners of the Carnegie Medal in fiction are Donna Tartt, Richard Ford and Anne Enright; previous nonfiction winners are Doris Kearns Goodwin, Timothy Egan and Robert K. Massie.

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