Carnegie Medal 2024: Complete list of winners

The Carnegie Medal has long championed excellence in American letters, and this year’s selections underscore why that mission matters more than ever. Announced in 2024, the awards recognized two powerhouse works that operate on deeply human scales while tackling universal themes. Amanda Peters’s The Berry Pickers won the fiction prize, delivering a haunting narrative that lingers long after the final page, while Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America claimed the nonfiction honor for its unflinching examination of family separation and the child welfare system. Both winners demonstrate a shared commitment to emotional truth—the kind that can only emerge from meticulous storytelling and rigorous reporting.

What’s particularly striking about this year’s Carnegie Medal winners is how they both work against the grain of how we typically discuss their subjects. Peters and Asgarian refuse easy answers or surface-level sentiment, instead inviting readers into the complicated, messy reality of loss and institutional failure. In a literary landscape sometimes fragmented by category and algorithm, these selections feel like a reminder that the most meaningful books often ask us to sit with discomfort and complexity. The Carnegie Medal’s 2024 choices suggest a recognition that literature’s truest calling is bearing witness to the stories that matter most.

Below, you’ll find the full details of this year’s winners and what makes them essential reads.

Fiction

• The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

Nonfiction

• We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian