Dayton Literary Peace Prize dinner held at Schuster Center

Kingsolver receives Holbooke prize.

Chang-rae Lee (from left), Barbara Kingsolver, Nigel Young and Wilbert Rideau appear before the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize dinner and awards presentation Sunday at the Schuster Center in downtown Dayton.

Peter Wine/Contributed photo Chang-rae Lee (from left), Barbara Kingsolver, Nigel Young and Wilbert Rideau appear before the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize dinner and awards presentation Sunday at the Schuster Center in downtown Dayton.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Man carrying child killed by train
Updated 4 min. ago
Man indicted for pornographic video of an infant
6:31 p.m.
Miami University puts regional director of admission, financial aid on paid leave
4:27 p.m.
Rosemary Clooney musical makes world debut in Dayton
Updated 1 min. ago
Ohio home sales started year with gains
2:07 p.m.
> More headlines

By Randy Tucker, Staff Writer 12:12 AM Monday, November 14, 2011

Dayton Literary Peace Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver channeled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday night when reflecting on the body of work for which she would receive the only literary peace prize awarded in the United States.

“I appreciate an award that not only appreciates the color of my prose, but the content of its character,’’ Kingsolver said, paraphrasing King’s famous “I Have a Dream’’ speech.

Kingsolver, an author from Kentucky, said she strives to promote peace and understanding with her stories in much the same way King engaged audiences with his powerful oratory and drew attention to important issues.

“It’s important to me to write novels that address challenging subjects, such as racism,’’ she said. “If you discuss problems in the framework of a story, you can move the reader in a different way.’’

Kingsolver received the first-ever Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award — formerly the lifetime achievement award — during a dinner and ceremony at the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in downtown Dayton attended by about 350.

The award was renamed in honor of the late Richard C. Holbrooke, the celebrated U.S. diplomat who played an instrumental role in negotiating the historic 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia, according to a release. The awards were inspired by the Dayton Peace Accords.

Holbrooke had been serving as special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan under President Obama when he passed away in December 2010.

Kingsolver was joined by Chang-rae Lee, who won the fiction award for his book, “The Surrendered,’’ which exams the war-time horrors of the Korean War.

Wilbert Rideau won the award for nonfiction for his work, “In The Place of Justice,’’ a personal memoir from his experiences as a death-row inmate in the notoriously violent Angola prison in Louisiana.

Nigel Young, a peace studies professor, was recognized with a special scholarship award for his role as editor of The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, which includes entries from hundreds of scholars from around the world.

“I know how difficult it is to remain truly nonviolent, but I think it’s essential for any protest to remain peaceful for the message to be heard and accepted,’’ Young said.

Rideau, a self-taught, award-winning prison journalist who served more than 40 years in Angola, knows first-hand the power of nonviolence in the face of adversity.

Rideau edited a prison magazine called The Angolite, which he said was sanctioned by the prison warden who sympathized with his efforts to reveal the truth about corruption in the prison system.

The feedback could have been lethal, he said.

“Our readership was not inclined to write letters to the editor,’’ Rideau said. “They expressed themselves in a more physical and direct way.’’

But once he proved to the inmates, prison guards and administrators that he was simply seeking reform by revealing the truth, “they respected that,’’ he said.

“What we did caused no deaths, no escapes, no violence,’’ said Rideau, who described himself as a “very improbable recipient’’ of the peace prize.

Share this article