Book News: Junot Diaz and Edwidge Danticat Win Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 09/10/2008

• Diaz takes Fiction honor; Danticat Nonfiction
• Taylor Branch wins Lifetime Achievement Award

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize has selected Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead) the winner of the 2008 fiction award and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying (Vintage) the nonfiction winner. Each receives a $10,000 purse. In addition to Diaz and Danticat, Civil rights historian Taylor Branch was named winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Runners up in the fiction and nonfiction categories, respectively were Daniel Alarcon for his novel Lost City Radio (HarperCollins) and Cullen Murphy for Are We Rome?, which compares Ancient Rome’s politics and culture with that of the contemporary United States.

Established in 2006, the award honors “the power of literature to promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution,” and claims to be the only “international peace prize awarded in the United States.” The literary salute is an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize commemorating the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ending the Bosnian war. The two winners will be highlighted at a September 28 ceremony hosted by journalist Nick Clooney.