By james art 
NEW YORK – Percival Everett’s latest honor comes from the nation’s public libraries.
On Sunday, the American Library Association announced that Everett’s “James” is this year’s recipient of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, which includes a $5,000 cash prize. A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Grand Canyon Spectacular Accident by Kevin Fedarco was selected as non-fiction.
Everett’s acclaimed adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Huck Finn’s enslaved companion, has already won the National Book Award and the Kirkus Award, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. “James” even topped The New York Times fiction hardcover list, a rare feat in recent years for a work of literature that wasn’t selected by a major book club or tied to movies.
“Percival Everett has written a modern masterpiece, a beautiful and important work that offers a new perspective through the eyes of a classic character,” Alison Escoto, chair of the award’s selection committee, said in a statement. “Kevin Fedarco’s unforgettable journey through the otherworldly depths of the Grand Canyon shows us the triumphs and pitfalls of exploration and illuminates the many vital lessons we can all learn from our precious natural world.”
Fedarko is a former Time magazine correspondent whose work has also appeared in The New York Times and Esquire. A native of Pittsburgh with a fascination for far-flung places, Fedarko has a long history with libraries—the Carnegie Libraries. He remembers visiting two while growing up, one in particular in suburban Oakmont near the hair salon his parents ran. He would read biographies of historical figures from George Washington to Daniel Boone, and otherwise thought of libraries as “important threads running through his life,” windows to a “wider world.”
Now a resident of Flagstaff, Ariz., Fedarco says he relied in part on the library on the nearby Northern Arizona University campus for both A Walk in the Park and its Grand Canyon predecessor, The Emerald Mile.
“The library has an important and unique collection on the Grand Canyon, and that’s the backbone of the story that helps frame the two books,” he says. “None of it could have been done without the library.”
The previous winners of the medals established in 2012. with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, include Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit.
This year’s finalists in addition to James in the fiction category were Jiaming Tang’s Cinema Love and Kavin Akbar’s Martyr!
Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster at the Edge of Space and Emily Nussbaum’s Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV’ were non-fiction runners-up.
All three fiction nominees were published by Penguin Random House, and the three non-fiction finalists by Simon & Schuster.
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