# Dayton Literary Peace Prize

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is an annual United States literary award "recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace" that was first awarded in 2006. Awards are given for adult fiction and non-fiction books published at some point within the immediate past year that have led readers to a better understanding of other peoples, cultures, religions, and political views, with the winner in each category receiving a cash prize of $10,000. The award is an offshoot of the Dayton Peace Prize, which grew out of the 1995 peace accords ending the Bosnian War. In 2011, the former "Lifetime Achievement Award" was renamed the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award with a $10,000 honorarium.
In 2008, Martin Luther King Jr. biographer Taylor Branch joined Studs Terkel and Elie Wiesel as a recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to him special guest Edwin C. Moses. The 2008 ceremony was held in Dayton, Ohio, on September 28, 2008. Nick Clooney, who hosted the ceremony in 2007, again served as the evening's host in 2008 and 2009.
The 2009 ceremony was held in Dayton, Ohio, on November 8, 2009, at which married authors and journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award.

## Recipients
### Fiction

| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2006 | Francine Prose | A Changed Man | Winner |
| 2006 | Kevin Haworth | The Discontinuity of Small Things | Runner-up |
| 2007 | Brad Kessler | Birds in Fall | Winner |
| 2007 | Lisa Fugard | Skinner's Drift | Runner-up |
| 2008 | Junot Díaz | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Winner |
| 2008 | Daniel Alarcón | Lost City Radio | Runner-up |
| 2009 | Richard Bausch | Peace | Winner |
| 2009 | Uwem Akpan | Say You're One of Them | Runner-up |
| 2009 | Louise Erdrich | The Plague of Doves | Finalist |
| 2009 | Ma Jian | Beijing Coma | Finalist |
| 2009 | Rachel Kushner | Telex from Cuba | Finalist |
| 2009 | James McBride | Song Yet Sung | Finalist |
| 2010 | Marlon James | The Book of Night Women | Winner |
| 2010 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | The Thing Around Your Neck | Runner-up |
| 2010 | Lucy Beckett | A Postcard from the Volcano | Finalist |
| 2010 | Ha Jin | A Good Fall | Finalist |
| 2010 | Eugenia Kim | The Calligrapher's Daughter | Finalist |
| 2010 | Abraham Verghese | Cutting for Stone | Finalist |
| 2011 | Chang-rae Lee | The Surrendered | Winner |
| 2011 | Maaza Mengiste | Beneath the Lion's Gaze | Runner-up |
| 2011 | Dinaw Mengestu | How to Read the Air | Finalist |
| 2011 | Mark Mustian | The Gendarme | Finalist |
| 2011 | Teddy Wayne | Kapitoil | Finalist |
| 2012 | Andrew Krivak | The Sojourn | Winner |
| 2012 | Ha Jin | Nanjing Requiem | Runner-up |
| 2012 | Leah Hager Cohen | The Grief of Others | Finalist |
| 2012 | Michael Ondaatje | The Cat's Table | Finalist |
| 2012 | Ismet Prcic | Shards | Finalist |
| 2012 | Jesmyn Ward | Salvage the Bones | Finalist |
| 2013 | Adam Johnson | The Orphan Master's Son | Winner |
| 2013 | Ben Fountain | Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk | Runner-up |
| 2013 | Louise Erdrich | The Round House | Finalist |
| 2013 | Susanna Moore | The Life of Objects | Finalist |
| 2013 | Robert Olmstead | The Coldest Night | Finalist |
| 2013 | Kevin Powers | The Yellow Birds | Finalist |
| 2014 | Bob Shacochis | The Woman Who Lost Her Soul | Winner |
| 2014 | Margaret Wrinkle | Wash | Runner-up |
| 2014 | Anthony Marra | A Constellation of Vital Phenomena | Finalist |
| 2014 | Alice McDermott | Someone | Finalist |
| 2014 | Antonio Muñoz Molina with Edith Grossman | In the Night of Time | Finalist |
| 2014 | P.S. Duffy | The Cartographer of No Man's Land | Finalist |
| 2015 | Josh Weil | The Great Glass Sea | Winner |
| 2015 | Anthony Doerr | All the Light We Cannot See | Runner-up |
| 2015 | Roxane Gay | An Untamed State | Finalist |
| 2015 | Cristina Henriquez | The Book of Unknown Americans | Finalist |
| 2015 | Jacqueline Winspear | The Care and Management of Lies | Finalist |
| 2015 | Tiphanie Yanique | Land of Love and Drowning | Finalist |
| 2016 | Viet Thanh Nguyen | The Sympathizer | Winner |
| 2016 | James Hannaham | Delicious Foods | Runner-up |
| 2016 | Elliot Ackerman | Green on Blue | Finalist |
| 2016 | Matt Gallagher | Youngblood | Finalist |
| 2016 | Aline Ohanesian | Orhan's Inheritance | Finalist |
| 2016 | Hanya Yanagihara | A Little Life | Finalist |
| 2017 | Patricia Engel | The Veins of the Ocean | Winner |
| 2017 | Yaa Gyasi | Homegoing | Runner-up |
| 2017 | Robert Olen Butler | Perfume River | Finalist |
| 2017 | Peter Ho Davies | The Fortunes | Finalist |
| 2017 | Annie Proulx | Barkskins | Finalist |
| 2017 | Colson Whitehead | The Underground Railroad | Finalist |
| 2018 | Hala Alyan | Salt Houses | Winner |
| 2018 | Min Jin Lee | Pachinko | Runner-up |
| 2018 | Jenny Erpenbeck | Go, Went, Gone | Finalist |
| 2018 | Mohsin Hamid | Exit West | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jaroslav Kalfař | Spaceman of Bohemia | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jesmyn Ward | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Finalist |
| 2019 | Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde | What We Owe | Winner |
| 2019 | Richard Powers | The Overstory | Runner-up |
| 2019 | Gina Apostol | Insurrecto | Finalist |
| 2019 | Mary Lynn Bracht | White Chrysanthemum | Finalist |
| 2019 | Tommy Orange | There There | Finalist |
| 2019 | Moriel Rothman Zecher | Sadness Is a White Bird | Finalist |
| 2020 | Alice Hoffman | The World That We Knew | Winner |
| 2020 | Christy Lefteri | The Beekeeper of Aleppo | Runner-up |
| 2020 | Valeria Luiselli | Lost Children Archive | Finalist |
| 2020 | Maurice Carlos Ruffin | We Cast a Shadow | Finalist |
| 2020 | Elif Shafak | 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds | Finalist |
| 2020 | Colson Whitehead | The Nickel Boys | Finalist |
| 2021 | Alexander Starritt | We Germans | Winner |
| 2021 | Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai | The Mountains Sing | Runner-up |
| 2021 | Louise Erdrich | The Night Watchman | Finalist |
| 2021 | James McBride | Deacon King Kong | Finalist |
| 2021 | Douglas Stuart | Shuggie Bain | Finalist |
| 2021 | Elizabeth Wetmore | Valentine | Finalist |
| 2022 | Honorée Fanonne Jeffers | The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois | Winner |
| 2022 | JoAnne Tompkins | What Comes After | Runner-up |
| 2022 | Anthony Doerr | Cloud Cuckoo Land | Finalist |
| 2022 | Patricia Engel | Infinite Country | Finalist |
| 2022 | Brad Kessler | North | Finalist |
| 2022 | Juhea Kim | Beasts of a Little Land | Finalist |
| 2023 | Geraldine Brooks | Horse | Winner |
| 2023 | Lily Brooks-Dalton | The Light Pirate | Runner-up |
| 2023 | James Hannaham | Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta | Finalist |
| 2023 | Noah Hawley | Anthem | Finalist |
| 2023 | Susan Straight | Mecca | Finalist |
| 2023 | Vauhini Vara | The Immortal King Rao | Finalist |
| 2024 | Paul Lynch | Prophet Song | Winner |
| 2024 | Anne Berest | The Postcard | Runner-up |
| 2024 | Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai | Dust Child | Finalist |
| 2024 | Janika Oza | A History of Burning | Finalist |
| 2024 | Eleanor Shearer | River Sing Me Home | Finalist |
| 2024 | Erum Shazia Hasan | We Meant Well | Finalist |

### Nonfiction

| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2006 | Stephen Walker | Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima | Winner |
| 2006 | Adam Hochschild | Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves | Runner-up |
| 2007 | Mark Kurlansky | Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea | Winner |
| 2007 | Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin | Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time | Runner-up |
| 2008 | Edwidge Danticat | Brother, I'm Dying | Winner |
| 2008 | Cullen Murphy | Are We Rome | Runner-up |
| 2009 | Benjamin Skinner | A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern Day Slavery | Winner |
| 2009 | Thomas Friedman | Hot, Flat, and Crowded | Runner-up |
| 2009 | Nicholson Baker | Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization | Finalist |
| 2009 | Joan Baxter | Dust from our Eyes: An Unblinkered Look at Africa | Finalist |
| 2009 | David Grossman | Writing in the Dark | Finalist |
| 2009 | Ariel Sabar | My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Father's Past | Finalist |
| 2009 | Strobe Talbott | The Great Experiment | Finalist |
| 2010 | Dave Eggers | Zeitoun | Winner |
| 2010 | Justine Hardy | In the Valley of Mist | Runner-up |
| 2010 | Roger Thurowand Scott Kilman | Enough: Why the Worlds Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty | Finalist |
| 2010 | Greg Mortenson | Stones into Schools | Finalist |
| 2010 | Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman | Tears in the Darkness: the Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath | Finalist |
| 2010 | Chinua Achebe | The Education of a British-Protected Child | Finalist |
| 2011 | Wilbert Rideau | In The Place Of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance | Winner |
| 2011 | Isabel Wilkerson | The Warmth of Other Suns | Runner-up |
| 2011 | Kai Bird | Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978 | Finalist |
| 2011 | Conor Grennan | Little Princes | Finalist |
| 2011 | Laura Hillenbrand | Unbroken | Finalist |
| 2011 | Mac McClelland | For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question | Finalist |
| 2012 | Adam Hochschild | To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 | Winner |
| 2012 | Annia Ciezadlo | Day of Honey | Runner-up |
| 2012 | Caroline Moorehead | A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France | Finalist |
| 2012 | Leymah Gbowee | Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2012 | Karl Marlantes | What It Is Like to Go to War | Finalist |
| 2013 | Andrew Solomon | Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | Winner |
| 2013 | Gilbert King | Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America | Runner-up |
| 2013 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity | Finalist |
| 2013 | Carmen Bugan | Burying the Typewriter | Finalist |
| 2013 | Blaine Harden | Escape from Camp 14 | Finalist |
| 2013 | Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac | Pax Ethnica | Finalist |
| 2014 | Karima Bennoune | Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here | Winner |
| 2014 | Jo Roberts | Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel's Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe | Runner-up |
| 2014 | Steve McQuiddy | Here on the Edge: How a Small Group of World War II Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream | Finalist |
| 2014 | Katy Butler | Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jesmyn Ward | Men We Reaped: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2014 | David Finkel | Thank You for Your Service | Finalist |
| 2015 | Bryan Stevenson | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Winner |
| 2015 | Jeff Hobbs | The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace | Runner-up |
| 2015 | Elizabeth D. Samet | No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America | Finalist |
| 2015 | Lacy Johnson | The Other Side | Finalist |
| 2015 | Meline Toumani | There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond | Finalist |
| 2015 | Jeff Chang | Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America | Finalist |
| 2016 | Susan Southard | Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War | Winner |
| 2016 | Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner | Find Me Unafraid | Runner-up |
| 2016 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Between the World and Me | Finalist |
| 2016 | Wil Haygood | Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America | Finalist |
| 2016 | Wab Kinew | The Reason You Walk | Finalist |
| 2016 | Jan Jarboe Russell | The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II | Finalist |
| 2017 | David Wood | What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars | Winner |
| 2017 | Ben Rawlence | City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp | Runner-up |
| 2018 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy | Winner |
| 2018 | Michelle Kuo | Reading with Patrick | Runner-up |
| 2019 | Eli Saslow | Rising Out of Hatred | Winner |
| 2019 | Wil Haygood | Tigerland | Runner-up |
| 2019 | Tara Westover | Educated | Finalist |
| 2019 | David W. Blight | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom | Finalist |
| 2019 | Khalida Brohi | I Should Have Honor | Finalist |
| 2019 | Anthony Hinton with Lara Love Hardin | The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row | Finalist |
| 2020 | Chanel Miller | Know My Name | Winner |
| 2020 | Jennifer Eberhardt | The Beekeeper of Aleppo | Runner-up |
| 2021 | Ariana Neumann | When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains | Winner |
| 2021 | Jordan Ritter Conn | The Road from Raqqa | Runner-up |
| 2021 | Toni Jenson | Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land | Finalist |
| 2021 | Isabel Wilkerson | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Finalist |
| 2021 | Valarie Kaur | See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love | Finalist |
| 2021 | Michele Harper | The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2022 | Clint Smith | How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America | Winner |
| 2022 | Andrea Elliott | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City | Runner-up |
| 2022 | Amanda Ripley | High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out | Finalist |
| 2022 | Shugri Said Salh | The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2022 | Heather McGhee | The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together | Finalist |
| 2022 | Evan Osnos | Wildland: The Making of America's Fury | Finalist |
| 2023 | Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Winner |
| 2023 | Adam Hochschild | American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis | Runner-up |
| 2023 | Catherine Ceniza Choy | Asian American Histories of the United States | Finalist |
| 2023 | Putsata Reang | Ma and Me: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ben Rawlence | The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ghafari with Hannah Lucinda Smith | Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World | Finalist |
| 2024 | Victor Luckerson | Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street | Winner |
| 2024 | Tania Branigan | Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution | Runner-up |
| 2024 | Edwin Raymond with Jon Sternfeld | An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America | Finalist |
| 2024 | Dana Sachs | All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis | Finalist |
| 2024 | Darrin Bell | The Talk | Finalist |
| 2024 | Dina Nayeri | Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn't Enough | Finalist |

### Lifetime Achievement Award

| Year | Author |
| 2006 | Studs Terkel |
| 2007 | Elie Wiesel |
| 2008 | Taylor Branch |
| 2009 | Nicholas Kristof |
| 2009 | Sheryl WuDunn |

### Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award

| Year | Author |
| 2010 | Geraldine Brooks |
| 2011 | Barbara Kingsolver |
| 2012 | Tim O'Brien |
| 2013 | Wendell Berry |
| 2014 | Louise Erdrich |
| 2015 | Gloria Steinem |
| 2016 | Marilynne Robinson |
| 2017 | Colm Tóibín |
| 2018 | John Irving |
| 2019 | N. Scott Momaday |
| 2020/2021 | Margaret Atwood |
| 2022 | Wil Haygood |
| 2023 | Sandra Cisneros |
| 2024 | Jimmy Carter |