The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, dedicated to honoring authors “whose work uses the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding,” has announced the winners of its 2023 awards.
Horse author Geraldine Brooks is the winner and The Light Pirate author Lily Brooks-Dalton the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction has been awarded to Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa for His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, with Adam Hochschild author American Midnight named as runner-up.
The prizes will be awarded on Nov. 12 in Dayton, Ohio.
“This year’s honorees capture the full weight and breadth of what the Dayton Literary Peace Prize means by ‘peace,’” Nicholas A. Raines, executive director of the foundation, said in a statement. “They deftly explore issues of race, class, and climate disaster with unparalleled clarity and urgency.”
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which says it is “the first and only literary peace prize awarded in the United States,” was inspired by the Dayton Accords, the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War. It is awarded annually to one fiction and one nonfiction writer “whose work encourages understanding between cultures, religions, communities, and political points of view.” Previous award winners include Chanel Miller, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Patricia Engel, Dave Eggers, and Edwidge Danticat.
The foundation previously named Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, among many other books, as the recipient of its Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.
Amy Reiter is a freelance writer.
