We’re gearing up for this year’s celebration of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction and looking back to last year’s winners: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
(Crown, Penguin Random House) by Matthew Desmond and The Underground Railroad (Doubleday, Penguin Random House) by Colson Whitehead.
Our friends in Booklist asked each of them to share the books that have left an impression or inspired their writing in other ways:
Matthew Desmond recommends:
Ceremony. By Leslie Marmon Silko. 1977.
Drown. By Junot Díaz. 1996.
The Grapes of Wrath. By John Steinbeck. 1939.
Invisible Man. By Ralph Ellison. 1952.
Jesus’ Son. By Denis Johnson. 1992.
Paradise. By Toni Morrison. 1998.
Salvage the Bones. By Jesmyn Ward. 2011.
Read more about what Desmond had to say about these titles here.
Colson Whitehead recommends:
Autobiography of Red. By Anne Carson. 1998.
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. By ZZ Packer. 2003.
Drown. By Junot Díaz. 1996.
Lonesome Dove. By Larry McMurtry. 1985.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. By Gabriel García Márquez. 1967.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist. By Mohsin Hamid. 2007.
Sula. By Toni Morrison. 1973.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. By Isabel Wilkerson. 2010.
Read more about what Whitehead had to say about these titles here.
Headed to New Orleans with us? Buy your tickets now!