Colm Tóibín has been named the winner of the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, which recognizes authors for their complete body of work.
"Colm Tóibín's work invites readers to contemplate the deep sadness of exile--from mother or brother, from nation, from oneself--to understand how accidents of geography and family shape identity, and how quirks of circumstance can harden or soften hearts," said Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. "The surprising turns in his fiction and nonfiction that illustrate the longings and complexity of his characters, even those whose actions we may deplore, remind us of our shared humanity and offer the possibility of reconciliation or simply of understanding, which are the first steps to making peace."
Tóibín commented: "Through fiction, we learn to see others. The page is not a mirror. It is blank when I start to write, but it contains a version of the world when I finish.... Good sentences offer us a way to imagine life in all its strangeness and ambiguity and possibility, alert us to the power of the imagination to transform and transcend our nature, offer us a blueprint not only for who we are but for who we might be, who we might become."
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Winners of the 2017 ITW Thriller Awards, presented at ThrillerFest XII, are:
Best Hardcover Novel: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (Grand Central)
Best First Novel: The Drifter by Nicholas Petrie (Putnam)
Best Paperback Original Novel: The Body Reader by Anne Frasier (Thomas & Mercer)
Best Short Story: "Big Momma" by Joyce Carol Oates (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine)
Best Young Adult Novel: Steeplejack by A.J. Hartley (Tor Teen)
Best E-Book Original Novel: Romeo's Way by James Scott Bell (Compendium Press)
ThrillerMaster: Lee Child
Literary Silver Bullet Award: Lisa Gardner
Thriller Legend Award: Tom Doherty