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Dayton to award author literary prize

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Randi Baird/photographer Geraldine Brooks is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award.

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By Kim Margolis, Staff Writer Updated 10:00 AM Thursday, August 19, 2010

DAYTON — Historical novelist Geraldine Brooks, whose works are marked by her experience as a wartime reporter, will receive the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement, organizers announced Wednesday, Aug. 18.

Brooks covered conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans for the Wall Street Journal before going on to write novels, including her 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, “March.”

Inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States.

“Most people are sheltered from the horrors of war, but Brooks reveals to her readers what their political leaders try to hide — the ugly realities of conflict and its destructive effects,” said Sharon Rab, founder and co-chair of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.

Brooks will accept the award at a ceremony in Dayton on Nov. 7. Recipients of the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize will be announced in September and honored at the ceremony with Brooks.

A native of Australia, Brooks’ most recent work, “People of the Book,” is based on the true story of a Jewish manuscript safeguarded by Muslims and Christians during centuries of European conflict. Her previous books include “Year of Wonders,” which follows a village torn apart by the plague, and “March,” the story of a Civil War-era idealist whose beliefs are challenged by what he witnesses in battle.

Rab said it is the emphasis on finding solutions to strife that is so appealing.

“We appreciate the fact that she deals with conflict resolution on so many different levels,” Rab said. “The level of the individual, of the community, of the country and of the world. She has both a personal and world view that is reflected in her work.”

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