2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists Announced

The impetus for The Dayton Literary Peace Prize was the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, It is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. The Prize celebrates the power of literature to promote peace, justice, and global understanding. A winner and runner-up in fiction and nonfiction will be announced on October 3, 2017. The winners will be honored at a gala (sold out) ceremony in Dayton on November 5, 2017.  Congratulations to all nominees and finalists for this year’s Prize!

The 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize fiction finalists are:
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler
The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel

The 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize nonfiction finalists are:
City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
The Hundred-Year Walk by Dawn MacKeen
The Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang
What Have We Done by David Wood
While the City Slept by Eli Sanders

Irish novelist, journalist, and essayist Colm Tóibín will receive the 2017 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, named in honor of the noted U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords.

Now more than ever, we need to celebrate authors who dare to explore the impact of war, exile, racism, and economic inequality and, more importantly, endeavor to offer hope in these tumultuous times.— Sharon Rab, co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.

Click each link above to view availability of these books in Cleveland Public Library‘s online public access catalog.