Finalists in the categories of fiction and nonfiction have been selected for the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prizes, sponsored by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation and honoring authors whose work advances peace. Winners, who each receive $10,000, will be announced October 10. The finalists:
Fiction:
Anthem by Noah Hawley
The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara
Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Mecca by Susan Straight
Nonfiction:
American Midnight by Adam Hochschild
Asian American Histories of the United States by Catherine Ceniza Choy
His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
Ma and Me by Putsata Reang
The Treeline by Ben Rawlence
Zarifa by Zarifa Ghafari with Hannah Lucinda Smith
In addition, the Foundation is giving Sandra Cisneros the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award in honor of her "groundbreaking contributions to peace."
Nicholas A. Raines, executive director of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, called Cisneros "the embodiment of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundations' values of peace and understanding, and her empathetic, perceptive voice is needed now more than ever."
Poet, essayist, short story writer, and author of the classic coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street, Cisneros has been honored with NEA fellowships in poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN America Literary Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among others. Cisneros is also the founder of two nonprofits, the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, which are dedicated to supporting aspiring and emerging writers.
In comments about the award, Cisneros said, "I witnessed a war's effects personally with the forty-year friendship of my hermana-amiga from Sarajevo. And what I learned was this: the casualties of a war are not simply those killed in warfare. Civilians and unborn generations ever after suffer with the shrapnel of that conflict embedded in their psyche like hidden landmines. I just returned from Sarajevo, and I know this is true."