Dayton Literary Peace Prize Submission deadline is March 10, 2023;
winners receive $10,000, runners-up receive $5,000
Dayton, OH (February 1, 2023) – The Dayton Literary Peace Prize today launched its call for submissions for outstanding fiction and nonfiction books published in 2022 that promote peace and increase understanding between people.
Inspired by the Dayton Peace Accords, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize honors writers whose work uses the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding. Launched in 2006, it is recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious literary honors, and is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States
Past winners encompass a range of established and emerging writers, including Hala Alyan, Richard Bausch, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Edwidge Danticat, Dave Eggers, Yaa Gyasi, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Brad Kessler, Chang-Rae Lee, Chanel Miller, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Francine Prose, Eli Saslow, Clint Smith, Andrew Solomon, and Bryan Stevenson.
The Prize comes with a $10,000 honorarium for nonfiction and fiction winners and a $5,000 honorarium for runners-up. All honorees will be celebrated at a gala ceremony in Dayton on November 12, 2023.
The submission deadline is March 10, 2023. Finalists will be announced in August 2023. For the complete nomination guidelines and more information on the nomination process, see here. The book should focus on a central message of peace, broadly defined as increasing understanding between and among people. The prize is designed for works that characterize peace as ending or seeking to end conflict – personal, national or international – establishing concord between and among people showing the consequences of persons, nations or institutions that recklessly disrupt personal harmony or universal accord.
About the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize honors writers whose work uses the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding. Launched in 2006, it is recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious literary honors, and is the only literary peace prize awarded in the United States. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize awards a $10,000 cash prize each year to one fiction and one nonfiction author whose work advances peace as a solution to conflict, and leads readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view. Additionally, the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award is bestowed upon a writer whose body of work reflects the Prize’s mission; previous honorees include Margaret Atwood, Wendell Berry, Taylor Branch, Geraldine Brooks, Louise Erdrich, Wil Haygood, John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, N. Scott Momaday, Tim O’Brien, Marilynne Robinson, Gloria Steinem, Studs Terkel, Colm Toibin, and Elie Wiesel. For more information, visit the Dayton Literary Peace Prize press room at https://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/press-room/