CORE Scholar
Wright State University sponsors CORE Scholar, a complete bibliography of DLPP works accessible through a database that allows the user to search by title, author, and award type.
High School
The Authors Series brings former winners of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize back to Dayton to meet with students, increase awareness about the prize, and help raise funds to support its continuation. Begun in 2010 by Stacey and John MacDonald, the event features a fundraising reception during which the writer meets informally with guests and delivers a short talk. The authors also visit local schools and university classrooms and speak at bookstores and other venues. The first few years the authors visited the Miami Valley School; Kettering Fairmont joined in the third year, and currently over a dozen area high schools participat with hundreds of students gathering to hear the author speak and to have their books signed.
The DLPP is grateful to the MacDonalds for their generous support of the Author Series.
In 2019, the tenth annual Author Series featured David Wood, the 2017 DLPP Nonfiction Winner for What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars. Wood spoke about his book and about moral injury with a panel moderated by Wright State University Professor Jonathan Winkler featuring four recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: David Berry, Ericka Carter, Jeremy Dobson, and Loghan Young.
David Wood and the panel spoke at Kettering Fairmont High School to an auditorium filled with high school students from Belmont High School, Chaminade-Julienne Catholic High School, Dayton Early College Academy, Dayton Regional Stem School, Kettering Fairmont High School, Meadowdale High School, the Miami Valley School, Stivers School for the Arts, Thurgood Marshal High School, Wilmington High School, and Yellow Springs High School at the new Kettering Fairmont Auditorium.
Copies of What Have We Done were donated to the participating schools through the DLPP Fly With the Doves Membership Program. The program was taped and is available on the DLPP website under Outreach at www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Wil Haygood, spoke about his new book Tigerland: 1968-1959, A City Divided, A Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing. Wil’s Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America was a 2016 DLPP finalist. Tigerland went on to be the 2019 Runner-up for Nonfiction.
During the 2018 event, held in the auditorium at Stivers School for the Arts, Wil spoke to and interacted with students from chaminade0Julienne, Dayton Early College Academy, Kettering Fairmont, the Miami Valley School, Stivers School for the Arts, Tippecanoe High School, and Wilmington High School. Members of the Junior Council on World Affairs participated as well.
Classroom sets of Tigerland were donated to participating schools through the DLPP Fly With the Doves membership program.
Thursday, August 31st 2017
In 2017, the eighth annual Author Series featured Karima Bennoune, the 2014 DLPP Nonfiction Winner for Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Karima, a professor of international law at the University of California-Davis School of Law, who grew up in Algeria and the United States and now lives in northern California, told stories of brave individuals advocating for peace. 
Karima spoke at the Trent Arena in Kettering to high school students from Chaminade-Julienne, Kettering Fairmont, the Miami Valley School, Stivers School for the Arts, and Wilmington as well as members from the Junior Council on World Affairs and the Dayton Council on World Affairs.
Classroom sets of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here were donated to participating schools through the Fly with the Doves membership program
Friday, September 16, 2016
In 2016, the seventh annual Author Series featured Bob Shacochis, the 2014 DLPP Fiction Winner for The Woman Who Lost Her Soul. Journalist, war correspondent, editor, and travel writer, Bob is also the contributing editor of Outdoor magazine. He has joined many other writers by saying, “Dayton has become a second home.”
This year, Bob spoke eloquently to students at the Miami Valley School about growing up in Camelot and his struggle to come to terms with the tragedies in the years that followed. He contrasted the then and now and emphasized that he, like all of us, is a human wormhole to history.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
To continue their common commitment to literature, The Miami Valley School upper school students and Kettering Fairmont High School’s AP and International Baccalaureate students joined forces to host the annual DLPP author presentation in 2015. This year, author Tim O’Brien, winner of the 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, addressed more than 400 students on Sept. 17 at The Miami Valley School campus.
O’Brien captivated the audience as he read from his book, The Things They Carried, stories drawn from his experiences as a foot soldier in the Vietnam War. He explained that whether the stories actually happened to him did not matter as much as the importance of people understating the devastation of war.
According to O’Brien, “I wrote these stories as a way of taking personal responsibility for my own decision to fight in this war. I wrote them to put a face on what war looks like. We don’t often talk about war in terms of real people. We talk about it as numbers, as statistics. But in reality it is about real people being killed, and about others killing them. To feel the truth of what that really means, what it really feels like for a soldier, it needs to have a face and a story.”
Friday, September 12, 2014
Our fifth annual Author Series featured Maaza Mengiste at Kettering Fairmont Auditorium where she spoke movingly about her girlhood in Addis Ababa during the 1974 Ethiopian Civil War and her quest as an adult to learn more about the conflict and its devastating consequences on her family and friends.
This journey of discovery inspired her first novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, which was chosen as the 2011 runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Award in Fiction. Mengiste’s acclaimed novel begins during the final days of Emperor Haile Selassie’s life and tells the gripping—and heartbreaking—story of a family struggling to survive under the Marxist Derg’s increasingly brutal reign of terror.
Mengiste, who was a child during the revolution, talked with students from Kettering Fairmont and the Miami Valley School about her parents’ efforts to maintain a veneer of normalcy and shield her and her siblings from the chaos and violence. As she began writing, Mengiste said, she surprised herself—and her family—by imaging incidents that had actually occurred but which she did not actively remember.
She has since published her second novel, The Shadow King, and was a contributor to the 2013 documentary, GIRL RISING, which focuses on girls’ education around the world.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Students in the International Baccalaureate program at Kettering Fairmont High School participate in an All-Read event featuring a novel or nonfiction book recognized by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. This year the Fairmont IB program chose the 2009 DLPP nonfiction winner, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner, who visited the school in October to speak to students from the Miami Valley School and the Kettering students. Kettering students shared the experience with students at the Banja Luka School in Bosnia-Herzegovina who also read Skinner’s book. The Bosnian students sent questions for Fairmont students to ask during Skinner’s lecture, which was videotaped for later sharing.
Fairmont English teacher Darren McGarvey described this year’s event:
“Immediately we found ourselves surrounded by opportunities and community partners in the fight against modern day slavery in our community, state, nation, and areas across the globe. Our efforts were energized when we became part of the DLPP Author Series and Ben visited Fairmont. Human Trafficking 101 classes, led by University of Dayton professor Tony Talbott and his students, were presented to staff and IB diploma candidates. Members of Fairmont’s own Human Trafficking Club, led by Katie Talbott, became involved as well. Together, students read the book, pondered its many complicated issues and brought questions to present to Skinner in an open forum discussion. . . .Ben added thoughtful insights about his approach with the text and addressed complicated issues that challenged students.”
Members of the Kettering Christ United Methodist Church and Lexis-Nexis supported Skinner’s visit to the school. Kettering Fairmont students are working to create community partnerships in the fight against modern-day slavery.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Marlon James, the 2010 Fiction Winner for Book of Night Women, spoke to an assembly of the upper school at the Miami Valley School and then engaged a succession of four English classes in discussions about writing and reading. Marlon was born in Kingston, Jamaica and told students of his early experiences of first reading classic children’s stories and then moving onto the great classics of English Literature. And he reminded them, “the book is still our most eloquent tool to speak truth to power, and to bear witness to the good and not so good in human nature.”
He also spoke of Jamaica as the inspiration for his writing and the complicated make up of that country as exemplified in his novel, “She not black, she mulatto. Mulatto, mulatto, mulatto. Maybe if she start to think that she not black or white, then she won’t have to care about neither man’s affairs. Since the blood that run through her both black and white, maybe she be her own thing. But what thing she be?”
James graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature, and from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania in 2006 with a Masters in creative writing. He spoke to English classes on the importance of honest writing from the head and the heart. Students asked questions about his craft and his life as a writer and teacher of Literature and Creative Writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Monday, September 19, 2011
For their summer read, the students of the Miami Valley School read Peace by Richard Bausch. Mr. Bausch visited the school on Monday morning and spoke to the gathered students about the research and writing of this book about US soldiers in Italy during the treacherous winter of 1944. As the Allies pushed the Germans north, they were living in a war of ambush and uncertainty. Bausch captured a moment of horror in the midst of a war filled with horror and talked with the student about how to preserve justice and integrity during the insanity of war. Students asked questions about research, writing, war, and peace.
After the morning assembly, Bausch visited two English classes for a more intimate discussion of the book and his writing process. He mentioned that he had dedicated this book to his father who had served in Africa and Italy, and that there had been incidents similar to the one he created in his book that had been witnessed by US soldiers.
Monday, September 20, 2010
In September, 2010, a new project, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Author Series, was initiated for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize by Stacey and John MacDonald. The intent of the Author Series is to invite former winners and runners-up of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize back to Dayton to raise community awareness of the prize. The author is featured at a Bloomsbury-style fundraiser, where the writer interacts with the audience informally during a reception and then speaks to the attendees, responding to questions and discussing the issues related to peace and the craft of writing. The author will also interact with students at the high school and college level, and present to the public at a reading and signing.
Our first author of the Author Series was Mark Kurlansky, the 2007 Nonfiction Winner for Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. Mark had returned to Dayton in 2008 to present the Nonfiction Award to Edwidge Danticat and was pleased to be asked to return as our first writer in this new project. He visited the Global Realities class at the Miami Valley School, and spoke to Peace Initiative classes and faculty at Wright State University. He made the point that there is no word for nonviolence in and of itself.
Kurlansky talked with students about the twenty-five people he chose to demonstrate the word. They include Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, the Founding Fathers, many Abolitionists, certain Russian dissidents, the Maori leader Te Whiti, and the Dalai Lama- who has provided a heartfelt preface to this volume. His Holiness writes, “It is my hope and prayer that this book should not only attract attention, but have a profound effect on those who read it.”
College & University
College and University Consortium
The College and University Consortium of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation extends the reach of the DLPP by coordinating and sponsoring related events for the academic community and the people of the Greater Dayton region.
The Dayton area is known for its wealth of exceptional and varied opportunities in higher education. The College and University Consortium organizes and presents author lectures, book discussion groups, readings, writing workshops, panel discussions, essay contests, and various class activities for students, faculty, and the community at-large. These events provide opportunities to honor DLPP-nominated and award-winning authors and to bring recognized writers to participating colleges and universities.
The Consortium works with university faculty and students to nominate writers for the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. The Consortium’s work also fosters partnerships and collaborations between and among the many colleges, universities and libraries that have joined together to promote the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and its focal message of peace – so relevant to the history of this region and the missions of the partnering institutions.
A major goal of the Consortium is to connect with colleges and universities throughout Ohio, the United States, and the world to invite these academic institutions to become partners in this process. If you are a student, graduate, or faculty member of a university that might be interested in becoming a part of the Consortium, please contact Debra Oswald, Library Director at Sinclair College, through DLPP Operations Manager Emily Kretzer at [email protected].
Helen Prichard, Library Consortium Liaison
Andrea Atkinson, Sinclair College
Christopher Bachelder, University of Cincinnati
Neal Baker, Earlham College
Paul Benson, University of Dayton
Ben Brazil, Earlham College
Julie Buchanan, Dayton Metro Library
Linda Caron, Wright State University
Jill Evans, Kettering College
Monica V. Fisher, Miami University
Geoffrey Giddings, Central State University
Michael Griffith, University of Cincinnati
Jennifer Habel, University of Cincinnati
Peg Hanna, Wittenberg University
Furaha Henry-Jones, Sinclair College
Rick Incorvati, Wittenberg University
Sharon Lynette Jones, Wright State University
Katy Kelly, University of Dayton
Katrina Kittle, University of Dayton
Dana Knott, Antioch University
Thomas Lasley, Learn to Earn Dayton
Valerie B. Lee, Ohio State University
Doug Lehman, Wittenberg University
Carol Loranger, Wright State University
William Loudermilk, Edison State Community College
Stephen Marlowe, Edison State Community College
Lee Martin, Ohio State University
Tanya Maus, Wilmington College
Marshall Mitchell, Wilberforce University
Gary Mitchner, Sinclair College
Chip Murdock, Wilmington College
Robert M. Olmstead, Ohio Wesleyan University
Rhonda Pettit, University of Cincinnati
Rosemary Ramsey, Wright State University
Caroline Reynolds, Sinclair College
Denny Russell, Antioch University
Alpana Sharma, Wright State University
Andrew Slade, University of Dayton
Bill Smith, University of Dayton
Vicki Stalbird, Sinclair College
Leah Stewart, University of Cincinnati
Andrew Strombeck, Wright State University
Linda Tse, Cedarville University
Keith Tuma, Miami University
Jay Twomey, University of Cincinnati
Sarah Wallis, Antioch University
Kimberly Weaver, SOCHE
Drew Wichterman, Tipp City Public Library
Peggy Wilfong, Cedarville University
WSU CORE Scholar
“The first and only U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace,” the Dayton Literary Peace Prize (DLPP) began as a homegrown effort by a small but committed group of Dayton readers, academics, and philanthropists to foreground the power of the written word to create peace.
Bridge to Understanding
Bridge to Understanding:
Discussion on Systemic Racism in America
Tulane University
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
On Tuesday, April 4, 2017, Tulane University and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize presented “Bridge to Understanding – a Discussion on Systemic Racism in America.” The event was held from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. in the Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center and was free and open to the public. The discussion featured DLPP co-founder Sharon Rab, prize recipients Margaret Wrinkle, Wilbert Rideau, and Gilbert King and it was moderated by Bernice McFadden of Tulane.
Community Conversations:
Books of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize works with libraries to share the nominated works with readers throughout the area and beyond. The library committee includes librarians from schools, universities, public libraries, former librarians, citizens who serve on library boards and interested community members.
The Ohio Public Library Network (OPLIN) is being utilized to send announcements regarding the winning authors and their works. University librarians serving on the Library Committee and the members of the University Consortium provides information to the university library committee. Several events are being held at university libraries in conjunction with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Celebration.
Immediately after the announcement of the 2009 winners, a mailing was sent to 118 libraries in Montgomery and surrounding counties. The mailing included a list of the winners and provided suggestions as to how their library could help Dayton celebrate this international award. In addition, each library received a copy of the trifold brochure and was encouraged to copy and distribute it to their patrons.
Libraries are taking steps to publicize the award through displays, links on their home page to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize web site, and designating winning titles in their card catalog.
The library committee has also encouraged the Trading Cards for Peace art card project through the library list serves, including the 1,145 school librarians on the list serve associated with the Ohio Educational Library Media Association. They have also disseminated information through the national list serve (LM-Net), which reaches 12,000 school and public librarians.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is donating a complete set of nominated books to the Dayton International Peace Museum each year to build their library. We have also donated books to public and school libraries whenever we have books to share.
Should you want to become involved in the library outreach program, please contact Helen Prichard.
In the fall of 2019, Dayton Metro Library partnered with area universities and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize to offer Community Conversations on the work of authors honored by the Prize. Free and open to the public, these events brought together area scholars, university faculty, and community readers at the Dayton Metro Library for wide-ranging and enriching conversations about the books. Each of the works discussed touched on concepts of immigration, family, and otherness, providing an overarching theme for the conversations.
These discussions were free and open to the public.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Public intellectuals, Darren McGarvey of Kettering Fairmont High School and Carolyn Stoermer of Wright State University led the discussion. They were joined by a panel of area educators and students. The discussion included information regarding how to teach this work. John Irving received the Holbrooke Award in 2018.
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
Public intellectual, Emerita Professor Marybeth Pringle, of Wright State University led a panel including an area public librarian and members of the Human Race Theatre involved in the spring production of Gloria: A Life to discuss Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road. Gloria Steinem received the Holbrooke Award in 2015. This was a timely book, given that among other things that 2019 is the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the U.S.
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
Dr. Tereza Szeghi of the University of Dayton hosted the event. Native American community members participated and the session began with a showing of the 30-minute film Return to Rainy Mountain by the author’s daughter, Jill Momaday. N. Scott Momaday received the Holbrooke Award in 2019.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Community Author Series
The tenth writer to be featured in the DLPP Author Series was David Wood, the 2017 Nonfiction Winner for What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars. The event was held at the Moraine Country Club and the room was filled with avid listeners.
David Wood, a war correspondent, was embedded with troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan and then followed up on the troops he had embedded with once they returned home. He became convinced that what we commonly describe as PTSD is not the cause of many of the suicides and despair of the soldiers who have served multiple deployments in the current wars. He joined a panel of veterans who had recently completed their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and were graduate students at Wright State University. Loghan Young, Ericka Carter, David Berry and Jeremy Dobson shared their experiences with the audience and connected their moral injuries with the book. The conversation was moderate by Jonathan Winkler, chair of the Department of History at Wright State University. The panel was then opened for questions from the audience.
In the fall of 2018, area scholars and community readers at the Dayton Metro Library join together for wide ranging conversations about books written by authors honored by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Engaging professors from area universities were joined by eminent Daytonians to talk about these works’ impact and artistry, essential themes, and connections to the authors’ other work, and the power of the written word to promote peace. If you’ve already read these authors, or are just thinking about doing so, these conversations will enrich your appreciation and understanding of these authors and their works.
These discussions were free and open to the public.
What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars by David Wood
This discussion will be led by Dr. Jonathan Winkler, chair of the WSU Department of History and a prominent military historian.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
This discussion will be led by Ms. Furaha Henry-Jones, poet and professor of English at Sinclair Community College.
Tigerland by Will Haygood
This discussion will be led by Mr. Ted Kissell, former athletic director of the University of Dayton.
The Sympathizer
Colm Tóibín
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Library Committee
DLPP’s important message of peace reaches library patrons throughout the region thanks to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Library Consortium. Consisting of librarians from school, university, and public libraries, the Consortium makes available DLPP-nominated and -winning works at various library locations. The libraries promote the prize through displays, linking their patrons to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize webpage and newsletter, and advertising the various events connected to the prize. The Ohio Public Library Network also publicizes the winning authors and their works.
The Dayton Metro Library has created a Dayton Literary Peace Prize book club, organized by Carol Macmann, New Lebanon Branch librarian. Readers meet monthly to discuss a designated DLPP-winning work. Additional information is available by contacting Carol at [email protected].
University librarians serve on both the Library Consortium and University and College Consortium, linking the two groups and sharing information on events in conjunction with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Outreach events by the academic community increase each year, and the libraries are playing a key role in encouraging this expansion.
Wright State University sponsors CORE Scholar, a complete bibliography of DLPP works accessible through a database that allows the user to search by title, author, and award type.
Each year the Library Consortium publishes a brochure that includes a list of winning book titles and their authors. The brochure is available on the DLPP website. It may be duplicated to promote the authors and their work.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize donates a complete set of nominated books to the Dayton International Peace Museum each year. Additional books also are donated to public and school libraries, with funding from the DLPP’s Fly with the Doves Book Circle.
Drew Wichterman, adult librarian at Tipp City Public library, coordinated a curriculum project with the Tippecanoe High Advanced Placement and accelerated language arts, history, and government teachers. The project integrated Gilbert King’s Nonfiction Runner-up book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys into the 2019 summer read and fall curriculum. The project culminated with Gilbert King discussing the book with the students on November 4th.
Library Consortium 2019
Julie Buchanan, Program Manager, Dayton Metro Library
Paul Gregor, Librarian, Greene County Library System
Linda Harrison, DLPP Archivist; Retired Librarian, Kettering Fairmont High School
Tim Kambitsch, Executive Director, Dayton Metro Library
Douglas Lehman, Library Director, Wittenberg University
Carol Macmann, Librarian, New Lebanon Public Library; DLPP Book Club Facilitator
Debra Oswald, Library Director, Sinclair College, DLPP University Consortium Chair
Lisa Santucci, Director, Tipp City Public Library
Elizabeth Schmidt, Reference Librarian, Wright Memorial Library
Drew Wichterman, Adult Librarian, Tipp City Public Library