NEW YORK

Receiving a literary prize from the American Library Association is a kind of homecoming for the essayist-poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

“When I was young, I treated the library as a place to pass time, to get lost in books that I could have otherwise not afforded to own, music that I could not have afforded to have,” Abdurraqib, 38, a recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Medal for “A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance,” said in a recent interview,

On Sunday, the library association awarded Abdurraqib the medal for excellence in nonfiction and gave the fiction prize to 25-year-old Tom Lin, the youngest ever Carnegie winner, for his debut novel “The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu.” Each author receives $5,000 and will be honored in June at the association’s annual conference.

Abdurraqib is a Columbus, Ohio native who returned there a few years ago, and the library system has been a thread throughout — whether a quiet place for his imagination, a refuge during times he was short of money or a source for a favorite book. He currently lives near the Martin Luther King Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library and stops by often.