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King biographer latest Literary Peace Prize honoree
Sunday, May 18, 2008
A core group of Daytonians have faith that great writing can change lives, having made it their mission to honor writers whose work "broadens readers' view of the world, addresses issues of controversy and shows the way to understanding," according to Sharon Rab.
Rab, founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, steers a committee that seeks out authors for what's become a highly prestigious Literary Peace Prize, an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, organized in honor of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Balkans conflict in 1995.
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"We believe that writing can and will influence the course of world events, and we want to ensure that those exceptional writers whose works point to peaceful resolution of conflict are honored," she said.
To that end, Rab and her committee have, since 2006, honored two writers each year — one fiction, one nonfiction — who meet that ideal.
They've also seen fit to single out writers for Lifetime Achievement Awards: Studs Terkel in 2006 and Elie Weisel in 2007. This year, the committee has chosen Taylor Branch as a Lifetime Achievement recipient. Branch's trilogy of "America in the King Years" has already won several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He's also written two other works of nonfiction and one novel.
Though the Lifetime award has been given each year since the Literary Peace Prize was founded, Rab says it will be presented only when an outstanding candidate is nominated. The idea came from Vick Mickunas, a Dayton Daily News book columnist and WYSO radio show host. Nominations are solicited from several sources, including the board's college and university consortium, publishers and the public.
"The discussions among the committee members have been tremendous," said Brian Conniff, former English department chair at the University of Dayton, who chairs the Lifetime Achievement Committee. "We have really struggled, from a variety of perspectives, to recognize excellent writing that addresses peace in a broad sense.
"One reflection of the complexity of this process is that we already have three writers working in different genres. Taylor Branch will be a particularly interesting addition, in this sense, because his life's work deals with the biography of a major figure working for peace, and struggles — successfully, I think — with finding a way to tell King's story in a broad historical context, in a manner that can engage a wide audience.
"This kind of writing, I think, is one way of working for peace," Conniff added.
Having decided to honor Branch with a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize committee is busy working through the nominations in the fiction and nonfiction categories.
Branch and the winners of those categories will receive their awards at a formal Schuster Center ceremony on Sept. 28. For information about the prizes and the ceremony, visit www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.
