2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winners

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize (DLPP) began in 2006. The express mission of the award is to honor the advancement of peace through literature. The DLPP is the only annual literary award in the United States to take on this mission. Works of adult fiction and nonfiction promoting peace and humanity published within the past year are able to be nominated for cash prizes. It is a unique and prestigious award, and it is a Dayton original!
The 2016 winners of the DLPP offer an interesting range of subjects, which is not uncommon to the awards. Each year four books and one lifetime achievement winner are recognized.



Holbrooke Award Winner for Lifetime Achievement
This year Marilynne Robinson was selected to receive the Richard C. Holbrooke Lifetime Achievement award. Graceful and accomplished, ethical and humane, Robinson’s writing has for over thirty years reminded, encouraged, pushed, and sometimes prodded readers to do that right thing and, in the process, to become reacquainted with what a U.S. President (who would surely also have admired her work) called “the better angels of our nature.”

Fiction Winner
Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut novel The Sympathizer  is a profound, startling, and beautifully crafted story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties. 
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.



Nonfiction Winner
Susan Southard wrote Nagasaki : Life After Nuclear War. Published on the seventieth anniversary of the bombing, Nagasaki takes readers from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the first-hand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation. Susan Southard has spent years interviewing hibakusha (“bomb-affected people”) and researching the physical, emotional, and social challenges of post-atomic life. She weaves together dramatic eyewitness accounts with searing analysis of the policies of censorship and denial that colored much of what was reported about the bombing both in the United States and Japan.A gripping narrative of human resilience, Nagasaki will help shape public discussion and debate over one of the most controversial wartime acts in history.

Fiction Runner-up
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham


Nonfiction Runner-up
Find me unafraid : love, loss, and hope in an African slum by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner


To place holds on the books or view last year's winners, please check out our new Dayton Literary Peace Prize booklist.

For more information on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, please go to daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.

2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winners

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize (DLPP) began in 2006. The express mission of the award is to honor the advancement of peace through literature. The DLPP is the only annual literary award in the United States to take on this mission. Works of adult fiction and nonfiction promoting peace and humanity published within the past year are able to be nominated for cash prizes. It is a unique and prestigious award, and it is a Dayton original!

The 2015 winners of the DLPP offer an interesting range of subjects, which is not uncommon to the awards. Each year four books and one lifetime achievement winner are recognized.

Holbrooke Award Winner for Lifetime Achievement

This year Gloria Steinem was selected to receive the Richard C. Holbrooke Lifetime Achievement award for her work as a leader and spokesperson of worldwide feminism. Steinam has spent her life using words to achieve peaceful political action in many arenas. She has driven the women’s movement with her written and spoken word. Her newest book, My Life on the Road, is her memoir of travel, activism, and leadership.

Fiction Winner

Josh Weil’s debut novel, The Great Glass Sea, is a novel of political, philosophical and historical. Weil’s book blends genres, but ties it all together nicely with expert storytelling.  Weil has been named a National Book Award "Five Under Thirty-Five" author, he has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Columbia University, the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee.

Nonfiction Winner

Bryan Stevenson, attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, wrote Just Mercy to bring attention to the different inhumane elements that we allow to inform our sense of justice in the U.S. His book focuses on an unjust death penalty case, but also highlights the focus of work overall—giving a voice to the condemned, both just and unjust cases. Stevenson has been recognized numerous times for his work exhaustive work defending human rights. He is also a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Fiction Runner-up

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Nonfiction Runner-up

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs

To place holds on the books or view last year's winners, please check out our new Dayton Literary Peace Prize booklist.

For more information on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, please go to daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.

Australia's Leading Ladies of Literature

June 1st was the birthday of writer and neuroscientist Colleen McCullough, born in Wellington. She studied neurophysiology, and worked in Sydney and London before becoming a research associate at Yale. She spent ten years there but when she discovered that her male colleagues were making twice as much money, she decided that she needed a backup plan.  She began writing in the evenings after work, and her first novel Tim (1974) was a moderate success.  Her second novel was a long romantic novel about a love affair between a beautiful young woman and a Catholic priest, set in the Australian outback.  The Thorn Birds (1977) became an international hit, selling more than 30 million copies. She quit her job and moved back to Norfolk Island, Australia. She wrote more than 20 books and died January 29th this year at the age of 77.

Help us celebrate her legacy by reading some books written by the best and brightest female novelists from Australia.

Geraldine Brooks--(March, People of the Book)--this Pulitzer-Prize winning Australian-American journalist and author won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Life Achievement Award in 2010.  She was born in Sydney.

Isobelle Carmody--(Obernewtyn)--this award-winning fantasy author began working on her Obernewtyn Chronicles when she was just 14-years-old.  She is a Victorian from Wangaratta.

Kate Forsyth--(Bitter Greens)--this re-telling of Rapunzel won the American Library Association's Best Historical Award of 2015.  She is a Sydneysider.

Kerry Greenwood--(Death by Misadventure)--she writes the Phryne Fisher mystery series about an aristocratic P.I. in 1928 Melbourne.  The TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries are based on her books.  The author is a Melburnian from Footscray.

Kate Grenville--(The Secret River, Sarah Thornhill)--this multiple award-winning Sydneysider based this novel on her great-great-great-grandfather who was a convict shipped to Australia in 1806.

Hannah Kent--(Burial Rites)--this debut novel is about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last person to be executed in Iceland in 1830.  Kent is a Adelaidean from South Australia.

Margo Lanagan--(The Brides of Rollrock Island)--this short-story and young adult author has won many awards including The World Fantasy Award.  She is a New South Welshman from Waratah.

Fiona McFarlane--(The Night Guest)--this debut novel was shortlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary award and is a deeply personal story about dementia.  She is a Sydneysider from New South Wales.

Kate Morton--(The House at Riverton)--this novel was a bestseller in the U.S. and the U.K. and the author has been published in 38 countries and sold over 3 million books.  This South Australian is from Berri.

Favel Parrett--(When the Night Comes)--she won the Australian Newcomer of the Year in 2012.  She is a Victorian and was a Tasmanian for several years.

M. L. Stedman--(The Light Between Oceans)--this London-based lawyer's first novel is about an Australian lighthouse keeper's family after WWI.  She was born and raised in Western Australia.

2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winners

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize was inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. It is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States, which gives Dayton a very unique claim to fame. With any literary award, I always recommend that everyone make a point to review the full list of finalists. The writers who create works worthy of a finalist list for any literary accolades, especially one as profound as the DLPP, are typically well worth your time and effort.

Introducing the 2014 DLPP winners…
Fiction Winner
Bob Shacochis, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

Shacochis's first collection of stories, "Easy in the Islands" won the National Book Award. His second collection, "The Next New World" was awarded the Prix de Rome from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His novel, "Swimming in the Volcano" was a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. Shacochis has been a contributing editor for Outside and Harper's, and has been a columnist and writer for several national publications, which include GQ magazine. (Bowker Author Biography)

In The Woman Who Lost Her Soul (Grove Atlantic), Shacochis sweeps through four countries over a span of fifty years and multiple wars, unraveling tangled knots of romance, espionage, and vengeance while tracing the coming of age of pre-9/11 America. In a magnum opus described by The Los Angeles Review of Books as "what may well be the last Great American Novel," Shacochis creates an intricate portrait of the catastrophic events that have led to an endless cycle of vengeance and war between cultures. Retrieved from http://daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2014-winners-press_release.htm

Nonfiction Winner
Karima Bennoune, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here

Bennoune is a professor of international law at the University of California–Davis School of Law. She grew up in Algeria and the United States and now lives in northern California. For more information, read her full biography here.

In Your Fatwa Does not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism (W.W. Norton & Company), Bennoune profiles trailblazers across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and beyond who risked persecution and even death to combat the rising tide of fundamentalism within their own countries. From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, the book shares the inspiring stories of a global community of Muslim writers, artists, doctors, musicians, museum curators, lawyers, activists, and educators whose stories are often lost amid heated coverage of Islamist terror attacks on one side and abuses perpetrated against suspected terrorists on the other. Retrieved from http://daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2014-winners-press_release.htm

Fiction Runner-Up
Margaret Wrinkle, Wash (Grove Atlantic)

Nonfiction Runner-Up
Jo Roberts, Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel's Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe (Dundurn Press, Toronto)

The 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize award ceremony will take place on November 9^th at The Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center. Nick Clooney will be returning as Master of Ceremonies. For more information, please visit the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website

.

And the winners are…

The 2013 Dayton Literary Peace winners have been announced! This year hosted an amazing group of finalists. The previous Dayton Literary Peace Prize blog focused on the texts when the finalists were announced. For the winners, I will give you some biographical information about the authors who created the award winning pieces.

Fiction Winner
Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master’s Son
Adam Johnson is Associate Professor of English with emphasis in creative writing at Stanford University. His work has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, GQ, Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. Johnson was a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His novel The Orphan Master’s Son was published in 2012 by Random House and received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He also has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013-14.
Fiction Runner-up
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Half-time Walk
Ben Fountain is also the author of a story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. His work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Whiting Writer's Award and also has been a finalist for the National Book Award both in the United States and the U.K. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. His reportage on post-earthquake Haiti was broadcast nationally on the radio show "This American Life." A graduate of Duke University School of Law, he practiced real estate law before quitting the law in 1988 to become a full-time writer.

Nonfiction Winner
Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree
Andrew Solomon is a writer and lecturer on psychology, politics, and the arts. He also won the National Book Award, and is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, and the arts. For a more complete biography, please go to Andrew Solomon's webpage.

Nonfiction Runner-up
Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove
Gilbert King is the author of Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. King is originally from Schenectady, New York. He has written about Supreme Court history and the death penalty for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and he is a featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine’s history blog, Past Imperfect.

 

The awards will be presented on November 3^rd at the Schuster Center. However, don’t try to reserve a seat at this point; the event is completely sold out. There is still space available for the “Conversation with the Authors” event held at Sinclair Community College on the morning of November 3^rd. For more information about the events, please refer to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website.

2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists

As a continuation of my last blog, I wanted to introduce this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists. The list is impressive. If I could carve out the time, I would treat myself by reading my way down the list so I could celebrate with the award recipient on November 3^rd. Did I mention Nick Clooney is the Master of Ceremonies?

Fiction
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
A  day in the life story of an Iraq War hero. Also a finalist for the National Book Award.
The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead
A coming-of-age tale that moves from the streets of New Orleans to one of the most physically challenging battles in the Korean War.
The Life of Objects by Susanna Moore 
Set in Germany on the eve of World War II, the story of one woman's journey of self-discovery as a continent collapses into darkness.
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for multiple awards. A riveting portrait of a world rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, and stolen moments of beauty and love.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
A 13-year-old boy living on a reservation in North Dakota sets out with three friends on a quest for answers about an attack on his mother.
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The Yellow Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive

Nonfiction
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Global change and inequality are given a human face via the residents of a makeshift settlement in the shadow of Mumbai’s luxury hotels.
Burying the Typewriter (currently on-order for WCPL) by Carmen Bugan
A Romanian girl’s bucolic life is upended when her father is arrested for political dissidence.
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King
Devil in the Grove is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. A detailed chronicle of four black Florida men who, falsely accused of rape in 1949, were defended by civil rights crusader Thurgood Marshall.
Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden
The shocking story of one of the few people born in a North Korean political prison to have escaped and survived.
Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. Solomon's startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all.
Pax Ethnica (currently on-order for WCPL) by Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac
From Kerala, India to Queens, New York, the authors explore regions noted for low violence, rising life expectancy, and pragmatic compromises on cultural rights, revealing how diverse communities manage to live in peace.

2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists. Retrieved from http://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2013-finalists.htm

How familiar are you with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize?

Dayton, Ohio hosts the only annual literary award in the United States that recognizes the power of literature to promote peace. Nominations are accepted for both adult fiction and nonfiction for works written in the past year. The purpose of the award is to recognize works that have helped improve the quality of life by bringing attention to and better understanding of different religions, people, cultures, and political viewpoints. The goal is to recognize the role that literature has in fostering peace, then to encourage the reading and discussing of the literature to further the spread of tolerance and understanding.

In addition to the main prizes for fiction and nonfiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Committee (DLPPC) also awards the Richard C. Holbrooke Award. This award has the same criteria as the other prizes, but focuses on an author’s body of work rather than a single text—akin to a lifetime achievement award. Nominated works must have a central theme of peace, can include issues of human rights, must appeal to a large body of readers, and must have enduring value.

On August 12, the DLPPC awarded Wendell Berry with the Richard C. Holbrooke Award. Berry is the author of over 50 works of essays, poetry, and fiction. Berry is a full-time farmer residing in Kentucky with his wife, Tanya. His writing focuses on the relationship between humans, the Earth, and the need for harmony. Berry also espouses the importance of traditional values, community commitment, local farming, and strong local economies for the survival of the human race. His works are varied, impressive, and relentlessly poignant.

Last year’s award recipient, Tim O’Brien, will present the award to Berry on November 3, 2013.

In addition the Richard C. Holbrooke Award, Wendell Berry has been awarded the National Humanities Medal, the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Louis Bromfield Society Award.

For more information on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, please visit:

http://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/

For the Library’s holdings of works by Wendell Berry, please check our eCatalog.

Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winners announced

In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords were agreed to and initialed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, ending a three-and-a-half year long war in Bosnia and beginning a strong commitment in the Miami Valley to promoting peace. In 1999, community leaders created the Dayton Peace Prizes to "recognize individuals who contributed to the peaceful reconstruction of a society torn apart by war." That tradition led to the creation of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2006. It is the first and only US award awarded to recognize the power of the written word in promoting peace.

This past weekend, winners of the 2012 awards were announced.  Andrew Krivak won the fiction prize for his debut novel The Sojourn. Judges Alan Cheuse and April Smith wrote that it was chosen, in part, because, "Though this compact and powerful novel never so much celebrates war as it does the power of the mind to recall it and the power of language that can describe it, which is the beginning of the making of peace." Ha Jin was the runner-up in fiction with his book Nanjing Requiem.

In nonfiction, Adam Hochschild won with his World War I history To End All Wars : A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918. Hochschild has been credited for his narrative style that makes clear the impact of World War I on the development of "Stalinism, World War II, and the Holocaust. And it was also the beginning, sadly, of new-fangled machines of destruction, of a time when, as Hochschild writes, 'the magnetic attraction of combat, or at least the belief that it was patriotic and necessary, proved so much stronger than revulsion at mass death,'” according to nonfiction judge Ken McClane. The runner up in nonfiction was Annia Ciezadlo for Day of Honey : A Memoir of Food, Love, and War.

Finally, each year the Dayton Literary Peace Prize awards the Richard C. Holbrook Distinguished Achievement Award. Previous recipiencts of the lifetime achievement award include Barbara Kingsolver, Geraldine Brooks, Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, Taylor Branch, Elie Wiesel, and Studs Terkel.  Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the awards has said that O'Brien is being recognized for his works, which, "capture the horrors and hallucinations of the twentieth century's most divisive war while carrying a powerful message for peace." At a time when most Americans are insulated from the impact of our ongoing wars, O'Brien's work helps us understand what it means to send soldiers into combat and reminds us that their war continues long after they return home."

For more information about the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the gala to recognize this year's recipients, please visit http://daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/






 

Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winners Announced

The winners of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize were recently announced with none of the titles disappointing.  The prize is given annually, with winners and runners-up in Fiction and Nonfiction.  Descriptions are from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize press release.

The winner for Fiction went to Chang-rae Lee's Pulitzer Prize nominated work The Surrendered.  The book is an examination of the long-lasting scars of war-time horrors through the intricately entwined lives of a American soldier and an orphan of the Korean War whose paths cross years after first colliding in an orphanage in war-torn Korea. The combatitive relationship between the two show how the psychological damage done by the war continues to plague them.

The Fiction runner-up is Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste.  This work is about the relationships and deception between a father and his two sons during and after Ethiopia's revolution.  It's a work displaying the difficulty of keeping a family apart while the world around them is being torn apart.

In the Place of Justice, the memoir of Wilbert Rideau, was the winner for Nonfiction.  Rideau, a prison journalist in the violent Angola prison in Louisiana, was condemned to death in an unfair trial.  The sentence was modified to life imprisonment and Rideau became editor of a prison newsmagazine, which under his leadership became an important journal instrumental in reforming the Angola prison.

The runner-up for Nonfiction, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, tells the stories of three African-Americans who fled the South for a precarious future in the North and West.

Barbara Kingsolver wins the Distinguished Achievement Award

Barbara Kingsolver has been named the recipient of the 2011 Richard C. Holbrooke Distingushed Achievement Award (formerly named the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award).  She will be in Dayton on November 13 to accept the award, which will be presented by journalist Kati Marton, Holbrooke's widow.

Barbara Kingsolver has degrees in biology and has been writing since 1985.  The Holbrooke award is only the latest in a series of awards and recognition she has earned for her writing.  She has been named one of the most important authors of the 20th century by Writers Digest.  In 2000, she received the National Humanities Medal, the nation's highest award for service in the arts.  Her book The Poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and 2009's The Lacuna was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award.  She has been recognized by groups such as the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American Library Association. 

If you've never read one of Kingsolver's books, you're in for a treat.  Start with Prodigal Summer, The Bean Trees or The Poisonwood Bible.  Or, if you're more interested in nonfiction, try Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. 

A chance to see my author crush, thwarted

I blogged recently about a book called Super Sad True Love Story (and in case I didn't convince you before, let me say once again, just read it).   Let me now tell you a super sad true book story.  Minimally, it's a somewhat disappointing true book story, but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. 

Each year, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize is given for outstanding contributions to promoting peace in both fiction and non-fiction categories.  In addition, there is also a Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Therein is the super sad (or, for you sticklers, fairly disappointing) part.  Picture this scene: there I am, merrily trolling about looking to see when the winners will be announced (this Thursday, September 23rd, if you're curious), when suddenly a name jumped out at me: Geraldine Brooks is this year's recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.  Yes, that Geraldine Brooks.  She of Pulitzer Prize-winning March, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders.  The very same Geraldine Brooks on whom I have a serious, long-lasting author crush.  How have I missed this until now?  I nearly fell out of my chair in my haste to look up ticket information.  Sadly (okay, disappointingly), at $175 a ticket for the cheapest ticket, I won't be attending the awards ceremony.  Instead, I'll sit back and focus on the great books that are making the event possible.   Check out the finalists in our collection (and because I'm too mildly depressed to write right now, annotations are borrowed from the Literary Peace Prize website).

Fiction

A Good Fall by Ha Jin 

In this stark and insightful collection, acclaimed writer Ha Jin depicts the struggle of Chinese immigrants in America to remain loyal to their traditions as they explore the freedom that life in a new country offers.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

A young Ethiopian doctor is forced to flee revolution in his homeland for New York City in this enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James 

Born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century, a woman with dark, mysterious powers finds herself at the heart of a slave revolt plotted by the women around her.

The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim
In early-twentieth-century Korea, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher struggles to choose her own destiny while her country crumbles under Japanese occupation.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Adiche
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie turns her penetrating eye on both her native country and America in twelve dazzling stories that explore the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them.

Nonfiction

Enough: Why the Worlds Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman
This powerful investigative narrative shows exactly how, in the past few decades, American, British, and European policies have conspired to keep Africa hungry and unable to feed itself.

In the Valley of Mist by Justine Hardy

A personal, moving, and vibrant picture of the Kashmir Valley, one of the most beautiful and troubled places in the world -- described through the experiences of one family, whose fortunes have changed dramatically with those of the region.

Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson

From the author of the #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian’s efforts to promote peace in Afghanistan through education.

Tears in the Darkness by Michael and Elizabeth Norman

Using the perspective of a young American soldier, this account of World War II’s Bataan death march exposes the myths of war and shows the extent of suffering and loss on both sides.

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

From the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart, a new collection of autobiographical essays—his first new book in more than twenty years.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

The meticulously researched story of a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four who chose to stay in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina and protect his house and business—but then abruptly disappeared.

2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominees

The 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize nominees have been announced. The award was created to, "honor books whose writers focused on peace with clarity and style."

The fiction nominees, with summaries from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website are:

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
A Nigerian-born Jesuit priest, Akpan humanizes the perils of poverty and violence facing children in Africa in this stunning collection of five short stories.

Peace by Richard Bausch
Set among American soldiers in Italy during World War Two, Peace is a compelling meditation on the moral dimensions of warfare.

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
A violent act of racism haunts generations of Native American and white families living in rural North Dakota.

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
Emerging from a coma caused by a bullet during the Tiananmen Square protests ten year earlier, a man recounts the horrors of the Mao era and senses the massive changes underway in China.

Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
The story of American executives and their families driven out of Cuba in 1958, Kushner’s powerful debut novel is a riveting exploration of colonialism, corporate America, and revolution.


Song Yet Sung by James McBride
The haunting story of a runaway slave and a determined slave-catcher in pre-Civil War Maryland, Song Yet Sung explores both the moral choices faced by both blacks and whites and the meaning of freedom.

Winners and runners-up of the 2009 prize will be announced on September 22, with an awards ceremony in Dayton on November 8. For more information about the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as the non-fiction nominees, check out their website here.