Cognotes 2018 Annual Conference Highlights - 5

2018 ANNUAL HIGHLIGHTS

ALAANNUAL.ORG/MOBILE-APP|#ALAAC18

COGNOTES

2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Celebration

Jennifer Egan accepts the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal For Excellence
in Fiction from Bill Ott, editor and publisher of Booklist. The medals are
sponsored by ALA's Booklist and RUSA.

Virginia Stanley, director of library marketing at HarperCollins, offers warm
congratulations to author Sue Halpern on her outstanding speech.

Featured speaker Sue Halpern and 2018
Fiction Medal winner Jennifer Egan delighted
an enthusiastic audience that included authors, editors, publishers, ALA leaders, and
conference attendees, celebrating the seventh
Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in
Fiction and Nonfiction on June 23 in New
Orleans.
ALA President Jim Neal introduced "one
of adult literature's most exciting events,"
reminding the audience that "at this time,
we are particularly conscious of the need to
support and share great literature to combat
ignorance and intolerance."
Featured speaker Sue Halpern described
the inspirations for the setting of her latest
novel, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library
(HarperCollins). One was her unexpected
dive into librarianship when she was asked
to help found a library in the Adirondack
town where she lived. The town had never
had a library and it allocated $15,000 to pay
for everything, including a librarian, books,
and furniture. Halpern and her colleagues
miraculously pulled it off, and the new library
was so popular that the 500 library cards they
had printed ran out in three weeks; within a

speakers, who mingled with attendees over
dessert and drinks after the program. The
event's lead sponsor was once again "NoveList," whose outgoing founder and general
manager, Duncan Smith, offered remarks.
NoveList has also long supported RUSA's
Book and Media Awards at Midwinter,
where the winners of the Carnegie Medals
are announced. Gold sponsors of this 2018
celebration included HarperCollins, Penguin
Random House, and Simon & Schuster.
The Andrew Carnegie Medals were established in 2012 by ALA and Carnegie Corporation of New York and are cosponsored and
administered by Booklist and RUSA.

Jennifer Egan

year, they had signed up 1,500 people in a
township of 1,800.
The library became a community space for
multiple activities and spurred the creation of
an arts center, which in turn spawned a coffee
shop. Halpern saw firsthand how essential
public libraries are to civic vitality and human
connections, to fostering communication as
well as learning. Her novel's setting was also
inspired by a feature she was commissioned
to write on the original Carnegie Library in
Braddock, Penn., outside Pittsburgh, where
she saw how Andrew Carnegie's vision of
turning a library into a community hub by
making everyone welcome became a reality.
Halpern then turned the podium over
to Egan, describing Egan's novel Manhattan
Beach (Scribner) as "Promethean." After accepting the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal
for Excellence in Fiction from Booklist editor
and publisher Bill Ott, Egan described how
the novel began to take shape when she had a
research fellowship from the New York Public
Library. Librarians showed her old photographs of the city's waterfront, and she was
hooked. Her spellbinding speech highlighted
the value of preserving memories, including
archiving personal materials. Her starting
point for the novel was New York during
WWII, a period when being a port was crucial
to the city's identity. "It was the waterfront,
and ultimately the sea itself, that led me into
the various realms the novel occupies, including the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Merchant
Marine, deep-sea diving, and organized
crime," she said, emphasizing throughout her
acceptance speech how essential libraries and
archives are to her work.
Victoria Caplinger, 2018 Carnegie Medals
Selection Committee chair, introduced both

COGNOTES

ISSN: 0738-4319 * Volume 2018 Issue 13
Reporters
Michelle Kowalsky
Rowan University
Glassboro, N.J.
Publisher/
Managing Editor
Deb Nerud Vernon
Photography
Curtis Compton
Armando Solares

Michael Buxbaum
Alexandra Buxbaum
Rachelle Morvant
Production
Tim Mercer
CustomNews, Inc.
Media Manager
Fiona Soltes
Videographer
Guido Ronge

Video Editor
Andrew Franks
ALA Liaisons
Paul Graller
Donna Hunter
Students to ALA
Wendy Bundy
Paige J. Dhyne
Kate Sanders

Sue Halpern

Research
information

Subscribe
for free*
Researcher?
Publisher?
Librarian?
Research
Information
is the essential
link between
publishers,
librarians and
researchers
*Registration required

http://alaannual.org/mobile-appi#alaac18 https://www.researchinformation.info/subscription

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cognotes 2018 Annual Conference Highlights