Associated Press
[ Source: AP ]
For author Percival Everett, libraries have long been a source of knowledge and discovery and pleasure, even of the forbidden kind.
“I remember making friends at age 13 with the librarian at the University of South Carolina, and she used to let me go through the stacks when I wasn’t supposed to,” Everett, who spent part of his childhood in Columbia, said during a telephone interview Sunday.
“One of the wonderful things about libraries is that when you’re looking for one book, it’s surrounded by other books that may not be connected to it. That’s what you get (online) with links, but (in libraries) no one’s decided what the links are.”
Everett’s latest honor comes from the country’s public libraries. On Sunday, the American Library Association announced that Everett’s “James” was this year’s winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, which includes a $5,000 cash award. Kevin Fedarko’s “A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon” was chosen for nonfiction.
