The winners, who each receive a $10,000 honorarium, will be celebrated at a ceremony hosted by journalist Nick Clooney on Sunday, Nov. 3, at the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in Dayton. The special dinner event is open to the public.
Runners-up will receive $1,000. They are “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain and “Devil in the Grove” by Gilbert King.
It has previously been announced that Wendell Berry — the novelist, essayist, poet, farmer, and activist — will be the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award. Berry is a Kentucky farmer who has written more than 50 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry “exploring how humans can live more harmoniously with both the land and each other.”
The annual awards, inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, are the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States.
In making the announcement, Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, said that this year’s honorees illustrate how a single event or circumstance — from having an exceptional child to falling in love with the wrong person — can be a powerful moral catalyst.
“These extraordinary stories remind us that even the most intimate personal challenge can serve as a building block for peace by inspiring deeper understanding and empathy,” she said.
To be eligible for the 2013 awards, English-language books must have been published or translated into English in 2012 and address the theme of peace on a variety of levels, such as between individuals, among families and communities, or among nations, religions or ethnic groups.
Judges for the awards are prominent writers, including Christopher Cerf, Michelle Latiolais, Maureen McCoy and Ken Bode. A full list of the 2013 finalists can be found at: http://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2013-finalists.htm.
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