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Literary Peace Prize finalists announced
Twelve finalists have been chosen for the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Books of fiction include: “A Postcard from the Volcano” by Lucy Beckett (Ignatius Press), “A Good Fall” by Ha Jin (Pantheon Books), “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese (Knopf), “The Book of Night Women” by Marlon James (Penguin Group; G. P. Putnam’s Sons/Riverhead Books), “The Calligrapher’s Daughter” by Eugenia Kim and “The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Adiche.
Non-fiction finalists are: “Enough: Why the Worlds Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty” by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman (Public Affairs), “In the Valley of the Mist” by Justine Hardy (Free Press), “Stones Into Schools” by Greg Mortenson (Penguin Group, USA), “Tears in the Darkness” by Michael and Elizabeth Norman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), “The Education of a British-Protected Child” by Chinua Achebe (Knopf) and “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s).
Winner and runner-up will be announced Sept. 22 and honored Nov. 7 at a gala in Dayton hosted by Nick Clooney. First prize is a $10,000 honorarium. Runners-up receive $1,000. Geraldine Brooks, author of “March,” “Year of Wonders” and “People of the Book,” will receive the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Sharon Rab, chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, said the finalists share an ability to “help readers see global issues through the eyes of individuals whose lives are immediately affected by the larger forces around them.”
Eggers and Mortenson are best-selling authors. Kim is a first-time novelist. The finalists explore issues including dislocation, famine and war crimes in settings that range from Jamaica and Nigeria to Kashmir and Ethiopia.
They were announced Wednesday, Sept. 1 by the foundation, which oversees the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States.
The award is given in the spirit of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.
Finalists will be reviewed by a panel of writers including Ken McClane, Cullen Murphy, Katherine Vaz and Nancy Zafris.
To be eligible for the awards, English-language books had to be published or translated into English in 2009 and address the theme of peace on a variety of levels.
For more information about the prize, the gala or the finalists, go to www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.
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