Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Finalists

Back in March I posted this big news:

...RUSA and Booklist announced that they will be using the RUSA Reading List winners for adult genre fiction and the Booklist 50 Editor's Choice titles as finalist lists for a brand new award for Adult Fiction.  Nancy Pearl has agreed to be the Chairperson of the inaugural award committee. The ALA and the Carniegie Corporation are sponsoring this award.

Well, today those finalists have been announced, and Karen Russell is on a tear this week. She should play the lottery.  Here is the official announcement:

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2012 Finalists:

Russell Banks. Lost Memory of Skin,
published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
An intelligent and fearlessly sympathetic portrait of a group of society’s outsiders—sex offenders—that illuminates the moral complexities at the heart of our justice system.

Anne Enright. The Forgotten Waltz,
published by W. W. Norton & Company
The vicissitudes of extramarital love and the obstructions to its smooth flow—including spouses, children, and the necessary secrecy surrounding an affair—are charted in sharp yet supple prose.

Karen Russell. Swamplandia!,
published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
This dazzlingly inventive first novel introduces 12-year-old gator-wrestling Ava Bigtree and her eccentric family, whose lives (and the Florida theme park they run) straddle the boundaries between the real and the surreal.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2012 Finalists:

James Gleick. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood,
published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
A comprehensive study describing the melodious interplay between science and literature documents the transmission of human knowledge from talking drums to the Internet.

Manning Marable. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,
published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA)
This definitive work on the life of the Malcolm X corrects previous misconceptions and offers new information about the charismatic leader’s life and death during the turbulent years of the civil rights era.

Robert Massie. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman,
published by Random House, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group
A compulsively readable biography of the fascinating woman who, through a combination of luck, personality, and a fine mind, rose from her birth as a minor German princess to become the Empress of all the Russias.

The winners will be announced at the ALA Annual Conference.