New Literary Prize to Honor Peace

by Claire Kirch, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 6/20/2006

A coalition of Dayton, Ohio writers, academics, librarians, media, and other local literati – including representatives of Books & Co bookstore, the Antioch Review, and the Kenyon Review literary journals – announced last week the inauguration of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The award will recognize writers whose books address themes of peace as a solution to conflict. Two prizes of $10,000 will be awarded each year, one to an adult fiction author and the other to an adult nonfiction author.

"Somewhere within the book, the author has to talk about resolving conflict with words. It can be addressed on any of several levels: peace among family members, communities, nations, religions, ethnic groups, and so on. We wanted to have broad appeal," Sharon Kelly Roth, Books & Co.'s director of public relations, and a member of the 21-member Dayton Literary Peace Prize Committee, explained.

Books submitted by their publishers for consideration for the first Dayton Literary Peace Prize must be published in English in hardcover, with a 2005 pub date. The deadline for publishers to submit nominations is July 15, 2006. The winners will be announced in October and feted at an awards ceremony in Dayton on November 5, 2006.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, which has been awarded four times in the last decade to world leaders. Recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, philanthropist George Soros, President Bill Clinton, and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the man considered the architect of the 1996 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the conflict in the Balkans.

For more information about the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, contact Sharon Rab, the chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Committee, at sharonrab@woh.rr.com.