Canadian novelist Esi Edguyan, whose latest book Washington Black has already been shortlisted for some of the world's most coveted literary prizes, has been named one of three finalists for the American Library Association's Carnegie medal for fiction, a $5,000 U.S. ($6,549 Cdn) prize.

Washington Black, which follows a boy's escape from slavery at a Barbados sugar plantation, is also a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for Britain's Man Booker Prize.

The other fiction finalists are Tommy Orange, whose debut novel There There is among the year's most acclaimed books, and Rebecca Makkai, who is nominated for The Great Believers.

The nonfiction finalists are Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir, Francisco Cantu's The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border and Beth Macy's Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.

Two medal winners, one from the fiction category and one from nonfiction, will each receive $5,000 ($6,549 Cdn). They will be announced on Jan. 27.