Dayton Literary Peace Prize

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize honors books that use the written word to promote peace, social justice and global understanding. Launched in 2006 in Dayton, Ohio, it grew out of the Dayton Peace Prize, which commemorated the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, and it describes itself as the first and only annual U.S. literary award of its kind. The prize is run by a largely volunteer nonprofit foundation.

Each year a winner and a runner-up are chosen in both fiction and nonfiction from books published the year before. First readers narrow the field for the judges, and each winner receives $10,000. The foundation also presents the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, renamed in 2011 for the diplomat who brokered the accords, to honor a body of work. Honorees are celebrated each November at a ceremony in Dayton.

English-language fiction and nonfiction first published in the United States during the previous year that centers on peace, broadly defined, and has lasting literary value.