Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Fly with the Doves Annual Book Circle Membership

You can help advance peace through the written word — the driving mission of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize — when you join DLPP’s
Fly with the Doves Book Circle Annual Membership Program.

DLPP shares winning and nominated books with local schools and universities so educators can incorporate them into their curricula with students, as well as into their libraries — but we can only do so much without funding. DLPP wants this program to soar locally, nationally, and internationally, and when you join, you can help us reach more people with these powerful works of literature.

The first recipient of books funded by your membership contribution was the National Library at Sarajevo’s City Hall in Bosnia. This library, fire-bombed during the Bosnian War was restored to its original glory in 2014 and we provided a complete set of DLPP awarding-winning and continue to donate books each year. All Ohio libraries (public, private, college/university and school libraries) may apply annually for a $1000 grant to purchase current and past DLPP winning books through the Ohio Library Association.

Each year, we donate books to high schools participating in our Author Series program. We have donated class sets of Wil Haygood’s Tigerland, David Wood’s What Have We Done and Yaa Gyassi’s Homegoing to schools throughout the Miami Valley. For every $25 dollars you contribute when you join each year, a book will be donated. Plus, as a member, your name will be listed as one of our Doves in the virtual “Fly with the Doves Book Circle” on the DLPP website and in the event program.

Like the Prize itself, this program acknowledges that every voice matters and encourages every person to participate. Your continuing support will ensure that the Dayton Literary Peace Prize continues to advance words of peace in the years ahead.

Please join today with either an annual or continuing donation at DaytonLiteraryPeacePrize.org/dove-members.

All memberships may be tax deductible.

Dayton City Commissioner Matt Joseph delivering books to Sarajevo Library.

See Our Current Dove Members

Please click this button to see the current members of our Fly with the Doves Book Circle!

We appreciate your support — it will ensure that the Dayton Literary Peace Prize continues to spread words of peace in the years ahead.

If you have any questions about this program, please contact our program administrator via email.

Thank you!

Levels of Giving

Platinum Patron—$25,000

  • Priority guest seating for 10 to attend the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening
  • Category exclusivity (if applicable)
  • Priority guest seating for 10 to attend the Conversation with the Authors panel at the Victoria Theatre on Saturday evening
  • Invitation for 2 to the VIP Dinner with the Authors on Saturday
  • One set of signed copies of winning books
  • Name recognition and logo placement in promotional media campaign including T.V., print, on-site donor signage, and the DLPP website as applicable 
  • Name listing in program

Gold Patron—$10,000

  • Priority guest seating for 10 to attend the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening
  • Category exclusivity (if applicable)
  • Priority guest seating for 10 to attend the Conversation with the Authors panel at the Victoria Theatre on Saturday evening
  • Invitation for 2 to the VIP Dinner with the Authors on Saturday
  • One set of signed copies of winning books
  • Name recognition and logo placement in promotional media campaign includes T.V., print, on-site donor signage, and the DLPP website
  • Name listing in program

Silver Patron—$5,000

  • Priority guest seating for 10 to attend the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening
  • Orchestra level tickets for 10 to attend the Conversation with the Authors panel at the Victoria Theatre on Saturday evening
  • One set of signed copies of winning books
  • Name recognition and logo placement in on-site donor signage and the DLPP website
  • Name listing in program

Olive Branch Patron—$1,500

  • Guest seats for 4 to attend the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening
  • Orchestra level tickets for 4 to attend the Conversation with the Authors panel at the Victoria Theatre on Saturday evening
  • One set of signed copies of winning books
  • Name recognition and logo placement in on-site donor signage and the DLPP website
  • Name listing in program

Patron—$750

  • Guest seats for 2 to attend Sunday’s Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Preforming Arts Center on Sunday evening
  • Orchestral level tickets for 2 to attend the Conversation with the Authors panel at the Victoria Theatre on Saturday evening
  • One set of signed copies of winning books
  • Name listing in program

Supporter—$300 per person

  • For Sunday’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize Awards at the Schuster Performing Arts Center on Sunday evening
conversation with the authors education sponsor

Holbrooke Society

An Annual Giving Society

The purpose of The Holbrooke Society of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation is to contribute to the long-term sustainability of the DLPP and to foster growth of new initiatives and programs that spread peace internationally through the written word. This involves the financial support of individuals most committed to being advocates of the mission of the DLPP. Members making an annual gift of $5,000 and above will receive a number of exclusive benefits offered only to our most generous supporters.

Since the DLPP’s inception as the only international literary peace prize in the United States 13 years ago, we have had award winning books set in 53 different countries, 65 award-winning authors representing 19 countries around the globe, more than 23,000 students actively engaged with the prize and 16 Ohio colleges and universities offering programming associated with DLPP. As an organization and community, we have accomplished much and know with the introduction of The Holbrooke Society that the DLPP will extend its reach and secure its future.

The Accords Circle
$5,000 – $9,999 Level of Giving

  • Invitation to the DLPP Saturday Evening Dinner with the Authors
  • Two tickets to the authors panel discussion 
  • Two tickets to the annual DLPP Awards Gala
  • A set of prize-winning books
  • Invitation to a special reception/dinner associated with the annual Authors’ Series
  • Recognition in the annual Gala Commemorative Program
  • Invitation to private receptions for additional DLPP events throughout the year

The Laureate Circle
$10,000 and Above Level of Giving

  • All of the benefts of above plus additional exclusive events with prize-winning authors and signifcant writers associated with the DLPP throughout the year.

 

Donation Instructions

If you would like to join the Holbrooke Society, please click the button below to pay via PayPal. (You do not need a PayPal account to pay with any major credit card.)

(If you would like to make your donation in honor of or in memory of someone else
or if you would like to remain anonymous in any recognition announcements, please type
your request in the area labeled “Comments to the Foundation” on the PayPal page.)

To pay by check, make your check payable to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation and mail it to:

Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation
P.O. Box 461
Wright Brothers Branch
Dayton, Ohio 45409-0461

If you have any questions, please click here to send us an email message.

Thank you!

Sponsorship Opportunities

Commemorative Keepsake Awards
Program Book Sponsor — $15,000

Our annual awards program book is a tribute to the mission of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, our award-winning authors, and our sustaining sponsors and patrons. This beautifully designed, four-color program book is a commemorative keepsake from the gala and reflects the quality, integrity and the power of the written word to promote peace.

With this sponsorship, you receive the following:

  • Signage at the gala event
  • Promotion on the DLPP website
  • 4 tickets to the always sold-out awards ceremony
  • 4 tickets to the Saturday night Authors’ Reception at UD’s Daniel J. Curran Place
  • Sit with a winning author at the awards ceremony and have your picture taken by award-winning art photographer Andy Snow 
  • Recognition as the Commemorative Keepsake Program Sponsor and one ½ page color ad in the program
  • Promotion through Facebook upon agreement, to share within your community
  • A co-developed news release announcing the relationship and its importance, to distribute to both regional and national press

Exclusive DLPP Awards
Ceremony Reception Sponsor — $10,000

You are the exclusive sponsor of DLPP’s 1½-hour awards ceremony reception that takes place in the beautiful Wintergarden at the Schuster Center. During this reception, winning and presenting authors and our 400 guests mingle, enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks while listening to the local musical duo Puzzle of Light. It’s a unique opportunity to talk one-on-one with some of the greatest writers in the world, and guests truly value this unique experience.

With this sponsorship, you receive the following:

  • Prominent signage throughout the Wintergarden during the reception plus an exclusive sponsor logo GOBO 
  • Promotion on the DLPP website
  • 2 tickets to the always sold-out awards ceremony
  • 4 tickets to the Saturday night Authors’ Reception at UD’s Daniel J. Curran Place
  • Recognition as a sponsor and a ½ page color ad in the DLPP keepsake-quality event program 
  • Promotion through Facebook upon agreement, to share with your stakeholders
  • A co-developed news release announcing the relationship and its importance
  • Right of first refusal for sponsorship in 2020
exclusive ceremony reception sponsor

The Hans and Sherry Tschudin
Student Table Sponsor Challenge — $5,000

Since the first DLPP gala, Hans and Sherry Tschudin have been patrons at the $5,000 level. Having shared the DLPP gala experience with friends for two years, they began a wonderful tradition of filling that table with students from Dayton Early College Academy (DECA) and from the University of Dayton. The Tschudins worked with the faculties of DECA and UD to find students who would be inspired by the words and thoughts of the top writers in the world. Last year, Hans suggested that DLPP use their student sponsorship as a model that others might follow, so to honor Hans and Sherry and their dedication to students and to education, DLPP is offering the challenge to create an additional student table sponsorship. The sponsor will choose students from a high school and/or university of their choice.

With this sponsorship, you receive the following:

  • Signage at the Saturday Authors’ Reception and the Sunday Gala at the Schuster
  • Promotion on the DLPP website
  • A table of ten for the always sold-out awards ceremony for the sponsors and their student guests
  • Ten tickets to the Saturday Authors’ Reception at UD’s Daniel J. Curran Place for the sponsors and their student guests
  • Photographs of the group by award-winning art photographer Andy Snow
  • Inclusion in a page in the DLPP keepsake-quality event program

Events

These programs are supported in part by a Dayton Region Arts Renewal grant funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and administered by Culture Works.

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Culture Works Logo 2018 LARGE
DLPP - A conversation with authors 2024

Please join the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation for a stellar literary event to celebrate the 2024 winning authors!

On Saturday, November 9, the Victoria Theatre stage will be graced by the presence of national and international authors whose works are being recognized as advancing the cause of peace. The panel of winning authors will be moderated by Gilbert King, DLPP and Pulitzer Prize winner for Devil in the Grove. Send questions for any of the authors to Emily—[email protected]. The conversation panel will be followed by an interview of Mr. Jason Carter, grandson of President Jimmy Carter, the 2024 winner of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award..

Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation
A Conversation with the Authors
Saturday, November 9
Victoria Theatre – Doors open at 3 p.m.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation 2024 Author Series will feature Alexander Starritt, the 2021 DLPP Fiction Winner for We Germans, in conversation with moderator Jordan Ritter Conn, the 2021 DLPP Nonfiction Runner-up, on October 10 at the David H. Ponitz Sinclair Conference Center at Sinclair College. The event, which is sponsored by Sinclair College and open to the public, begins at 6 p.m. with drinks and hors d’oeuvres before Conversation with the Authors, which begins at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 with a 50% discount for students and can be purchased at the registration link below. All proceeds from the event support the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation.

Starritt’s powerful novel, We Germans, tells the story of an ordinary German soldier in World War II, as he comes to terms with his crimes and guilt in a letter written decades later to his grandson. Praised for its intelligence and eloquence, the novel is both historic and timely in its exploration of the nature of evil and a society’s perpetuation of it.

The Author Series’ Conversation with the Authors is an outgrowth of the Student Author Series, begun in 2010 to return former winners of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize to Dayton to meet with area high school students, who are studying their books. Initially hosted by the Miami Valley School, the program has grown to include more than 15 Dayton-area schools, whose students attend a lecture and meet in person with the author, and International Baccalaureate Schools in other Ohio cities, who participate virtually. Classrooms receive a set of 25 books provided through the DLPP Fly with Doves Membership program and a curriculum. Since 2010, more than 4,000 students have participated in the Author Series and author’s lecture, which will be held this year on October 11 at Fairmont High School in Kettering.

An Initiative from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Play Video

More than a book club, Turn the Page becomes an agent for change, an evolution in thought brought about by a conversation with authors who have their fingers on the pulse of history, so therefore insight in the human heart. Each segment will bring two of our winning authors together to discuss a subject their works have in common. Gilbert King, a DLPP Honorary Advisory Board member, the 2013 DLPP Runner-up for The Devil in the Grove and the Pulitzer Prize winner for the same title, will moderate the segments.

This Turn the Page features a conversation between Andrew Krivak, Ben Fountain, and interviewer Loghan Young. Gilbert King will moderate.

The  Zoom link will be emailed to registered participants from Eventbrite on December 12, 2022 and an hour before the event begins. Please use this Zoom information to access the event.  

Please test your Zoom account before the webinar and download the latest Zoom software.  If you need additional technical support, please visit zoom.us/support.

Please note that emails from Eventbrite may not appear in your inbox depending on your email account settings.  If you do not see the Zoom information email in your inbox, please check your spam/promotions folders or search for “Dayton Literary Peace Prize” using the search feature.  Please contact Emily Kretzer at [email protected] if you do not receive the Zoom information.

Heroism and Doubt: The Irony of War

2012 Fiction Winner Andrew Krivak (The Sojourn) and 2013 Fiction Runner-up Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) present the stories of two reluctant soldiers in two very different wars (World War 1 and Iraq, respectively). Even though one makes a sojourn and the other takes a walk, these young men make a journey that changes them as soldiers and as men.

Please join us at 7:00 EST on Thursday, February 2, when these two writers join in conversation with Turn the Page moderator Gilbert King and interviewer Loghan Young to discuss the effect of war on young soldiers. Loghan served four years of active duty in the Army as a transportation specialist, earning a combat action badge for her one-year tour in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is currently a program manager for the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.  Loghan’s questions will explore the literary, historical, and cultural contexts of each book that lead to the understanding of both the main and secondary characters and how peace becomes an essential part of that understanding.

Featured Books:

    • The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
    • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Both books are available through our Dayton Literary Peace Prize shop within Bookshop.org.

Previous Events

The eighth Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Andrew Krivak, Ben Fountain, and Interviewer Logan Young.

The seventh Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Jordan Ritter Conn, the 2021 Nonfiction Runner-up for The Road From Raqqa, and Christy Lefteri, the 2020 Fiction Runner-up for The Beekeeper of Aleppo.

The sixth Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Alexander Starritt, the 2021 Fiction Winner for We Germans, and Ariana Neumann, the 2021 Nonfiction Winner for When Time Stopped.

The fifth Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Jennifer Eberhardt, the 2020 Nonfiction Runner-up for Biased, and Isabel Wilkerson, the 2011 Nonfiction Runner-up for The Warmth of Other Suns.

The fourth Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Patricia Engel, the 2017 Fiction Winner for The Veins of the Ocean, and Edwidge Danticat, the 2008 Nonfiction Winner for Brother, I’m Dying.

The third Turn the Page event featured a conversation between N. Scott Momaday, the 2019 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished  Achievement Award Winner and Louise Erdrich, the 2014 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished  Achievement Award Winner.

The second Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Richard Bausch, the 2009 Fiction Winner for Peace and Andrew Krivak, the 2012 Fiction Winner for The Sojourn.

The first Turn the Page event featured a conversation between Min Jin Lee, the 2018 Fiction Runner-up for Pachinko and Viet Thanh Nguyen, the 2016 Fiction Winner for The Sympathizer.

Virtual Book Club

Instituted because we wanted a way to connect with our readers during COVID-19, the book club has become so successful that it will remain a feature of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize even after we can gather safely in person. It has allowed readers from throughout the area and in other states to join in a conversation about books that advance peace. 

Ron Rollins, recently retired as the Issues and Voices Editor of The Dayton Daily News, has been gracious in accepting the role of host and discussion moderator for the club. Since May 2020, we have read books by winners, the Holbrooke winners and finalists, an array of choices that gives us numerous options.

If this will be your first time attending the DLPP Virtual Book Club, please contact our Program Manager Emily Kretzer [email protected] and you will be placed on our contact list. Our membership includes readers from throughout Ohio and extends to readers from coast to coast.

August 2, 2023 at 7:00 pm EDT

In spare, breathtaking prose, Like the Appearance of Horses is the freestanding, culminating novel in Andrew Krivak’s Dardan Trilogy, which began with The Sojourn and The Signal Flame. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, at 7:00. Andrew Krivak will be joining us for the discussion and will discuss both works.

Like the Appearance of Horses is a story about borders drawn within families as well as around nations, and redrawn by ethnicity, prejudice, and war. It is also a tender story of love and how it is tested by duty, loyalty, and honor.

Rooted in the small, mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I, Like the Appearance of Horses immerses us in the intimate lives of a family whose fierce bonds have been shaped by the great conflicts of the past century.

Andrew Krivak charts a razor-fine line between war and peace, damnation and redemption, estrangement, and love, and along the way gives us a gorgeously detailed portrait of an American family. Whether he’s writing about battle, the natural world, or the most private, searing matters of the heart, Krivak brings a rare mastery to the page, a synthesis of language and deep perception that delivers revelation after revelation. Like the Appearance of Horses is a major achievement.

– Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

July 5, 2023 at 7:00 pm EDT

The DLPP Virtual Book Club will continue its exploration of Andrew Krivak’s award-winning Dardan Trilogy with a double-header for July and August. Each book is a stand-alone, but as a trilogy, they encompass a century of fathers and sons doing their duty by fighting the wars of their generations. Back in 2021, we read the second book, The Signal Flame, which captures the family in 1972 in the midst of Viet Nam 

For July we will be reading The Sojourn, the first book of Krivak’s trilogy, a story of WWI. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, at 7:00.

The 2012 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Fiction Winner, a National Book Award Finalist, and winner of the Chautauqua Prize, The Sojourn introduces us to the characters we will be following through the trilogy as Krivak draws upon family stories to create a poignant tale of fathers and sons, addressing the great immigration to America and the desire to live the American dream amid the unfolding tragedy in Europe.

Unsentimental yet elegant…with ease [The Sojourn] joins the ranks of other significant works of fiction portraying World War I – Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front or Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

– Library Journal (starred review)

Some writers are good at drawing a literary curtain over reality, and then there are writers who raise the veil and lead us to see for the first time. Krivak belongs to the latter. The Sojourn, about a war and a family and coming-of-age, does not present a single false moment of sentimental creation. Rather, it looks deeply into its characters’ lives with wisdom and humanity, and, in doing so, helps us experience a distant past that feels as if it could be our own.

– National Book Awards Judges’ Citation for The Sojourn (2011 Fiction Finalist)

This splendid first novel which comes in under 200 pages, tells a much larger story, a story—yes, let’s invoke Tolstoy—of war and peace. Krivak’s main character, an American-born Slovak boy named Jozef Vinich, comes into the world on the western frontier at the turn of the 20th century, but because of a fateful accident, gets whisked back to the old country by his Slovakian father. There in the cold mountains of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Jozef learns the ways and wiles of a hardscrabble life and discovers his gift for sharpshooting. He volunteers to go to war– this is World War I, of course– and finds himself on the other side of the front from that Italian army most American readers know best from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Though this compact and powerful novel never so much celebrates war as it does the power of the mind to recall it and the power of language that can describe it, which is the beginning of the making of peace.  Sharpshooter Jozef’s winter sojourn in the battle-ravaged mountains of his homeland is truly a story that celebrates, in its stripped-down but resonant fashion, the flow between creation and destruction we all call life. 

–Alan Cheuse, DLPP Fiction Judge

May 24, 2023 at 7:00 pm EDT

We will be reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 7:00.

Barbara Kingsolver was the DLPP Holbooke winner in 2011 and we are delighted that Demon Copperhead is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction. Kingsolver has been a champion of the Appalachian people and culture since her earliest works.

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

“Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient.”
—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

For more information on Demon Copperhead, please read Ron Charles Review in The Washington Post.

May 24, 2023 at 7:00 pm EDT

We will be reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 7:00.

Barbara Kingsolver was the DLPP Holbooke winner in 2011 and we are delighted that Demon Copperhead is the 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction. Kingsolver has been a champion of the Appalachian people and culture since her earliest works.

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

“Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient.”
—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

For more information on Demon Copperhead, please read Ron Charles Review in The Washington Post.

April 12, 2023 at 7:00 pm EDT

We will be reading Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, at 7:00. Andrea will be joining us for the discussion.

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City was the 2022 DLPP Nonfiction Runner-up. Attendees were mesmerized by Andrea’s comments on Saturday at the Victoria and at the gala. She also presented to combined English and Social Studies classes at Wright State before flying out on Monday.

Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Her reporting has been awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, an Overseas Press Club award, and was Runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She has served as an Emerson fellow at New America, a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation, and is the recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant. In 2015, she received Columbia University’s Medal for Excellence, given to one alumnus or alumna under the age of forty-five. Elliott is the first woman to win individual Pulitzer Prizes in both Journalism and Arts & Letters. She lives in New York City. This is her first book.

“A classic to rank with Orwell.”
The Sunday Times

“From its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering for reimmersion in its Dickensian depths. This book is so many things: a staggering feat of reporting, an act of profound civic love, an extraordinarily moving tale about the fierceness of family love, and above all, a future American classic.”
—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

In Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care. Out on the street, Dasani becomes a fierce fighter “to protect those who I love.” When she finally escapes city life to enroll in a boarding school, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning your family, and yourself?

A work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott’s Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality—told through the crucible of one remarkable girl.  

For more information, please read the following NPR book review ‘Invisible Child’ tells the story of childhood homelessness in America by Erika Taylor 

March 1, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins, the 2022 Runner-up in Fiction. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, March 1 at 7:00 p.m. EST.

January 18, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading North by Brad Kessler. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, January 18 at 7:00 p.m. EST. Brad will be joining for the discussion.

The early attendees of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize will remember Brad well, as he was the 2007 Fiction Winner for the riveting novel, Birds in Fall, which I heartily recommend to you, and he returned in 2008 to present the Fiction Prize. Many of us fell in love with his memoir, Goat Song, also heartily recommended.

But on January 18, we will be focusing on Brad’s newest work North, a story of immigration, friendship, honor, and compassion that was a DLPP Fiction Finalist in 2022. In the words of one of our previous runners-up,North is a powerful, memorable, tender meditation on the fate of immigrants worldwide. My heart skipped many times as I followed the hopes of Sahro Abdi Muse, the Somali protagonist, and the intrigue at the Vermont monastery where a religious community struggles to protect her from dark forces. I love this book. I couldn’t put it down.” 
―Uwem Akpan, author of Say You’re One of Them, winner of the PEN Open Book Award and an Oprah’s Book Club pick as well as a DLPP Fiction Runner-up.

Please join us for what promises to be a thoughtful discussion of a book that will make us all reconsider what we think we know.  “North is a brave and ambitious novel . . . an intimate yet globe-spanning book that brilliantly combines the personal with the political. Kessler’s sensitivity to both the exterior elemental world of northern Vermont and the interior world of our hearts, souls, and minds makes for that rare thing: a book that is as transporting as it is profound.”
―Peter Cameron, author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and Finalist for the Vermont Book Award. A powerfully moving novel about the intertwined lives of a Vermont monk, a Somali refugee, and an Afghan war veteran by the author of the acclaimed memoir Goat Song.

As a late spring blizzard brews, Brother Christopher, a cloistered monk at Blue Mountain Monastery in Vermont, rushes to tend to his Ida Red and Northern Spy apple trees in advance of the unseasonal snowstorm. When the storm lands a young Somali refugee, Sahro Abdi Muse, at the monastery, Christopher is pulled back into the world as his life intersects with Sahro’s and that of an Afghan war veteran in surprising and revealing ways. 

North traces the epic journey of Sahro from her home in Somalia to South America, along the migrant route through Central America and Mexico, to New York City, and finally, her dangerous attempt to continue north to safety in Canada. It also compellingly traces the inner journeys of Brother Christopher, questioning his future in a world where the monastery way of life is waning, and of veteran Teddy Fletcher, seeking a way to make peace with his past.

Written in Brad Kessler’s sharp, beautiful, and observant prose, and grounded in the author’s own corner of Vermont, where there is a Carthusian monastery, a vibrant community of Somali asylum seekers, and a hole left after a disproportionate number of Vermont soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, North gives voice to these invisible communities, delivering a story of human connection in a time of displacement.

Previous Book Club Events from 2020-2022

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Horse the newest novel by our 2010 Lifetime Achievement Winner Geraldine Brooks. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. EDT.

“In her thrilling new novel Horse, Geraldine Brooks moves back and forth between the 19th century and the near present with the same practiced ease she displayed in her 2008 epic People of the Book . . . Brooks [has an] almost clairvoyant ability to conjure up the textures of the past and of each character’s inner life . . . Her felicitous, economical style and flawless pacing carries us briskly yet unhurriedly along. And the novel’s alternating narratives, by suspending time, also intensify suspense.” Wall Street Journal

“A testament to the intelligence and humanity of animals, a stinging rebuke of racist and abusive humans, and a study of how the past gets recorded, remembered, and remade . . . anyone who ever grew up loving horses, anyone who dearly loves an animal, will find a cornucopia of riches in this novel.”

“There’s something bordering on the supernatural about Geraldine Brooks. She seems able to transport herself back to earlier time periods, to time travel. Sometimes, reading her work, she draws you so thoroughly into another era that you swear she’s actually lived in it. With sensory acuity and a deep and complex understanding of emotional states, she conjures up the way we lived then . . . enrapturing.— The Boston Globe

If you would like to read a review of Horse in the Washington Post The historical novel ‘Horse’ sheds light on real-life racism.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading the 2013 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Fiction Runner-up, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:00 p.m. EDT.

Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving Day, the Bravos are guests of a Dallas football team, slated to be part of the halftime show.

Among the Bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn. Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the team’s owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.

Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is not merely good; it’s Pulitzer Prize-quality good . . . A bracing, fearless and uproarious satire of how contemporary war is waged and sold to the American public.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“A masterful echo of Catch-22, with war in Iraq at the center. …a gut-punch of a debut novel…There’s hardly a false note or even a slightly off-pitch one, in Fountain’s sympathetic, damning and structurally ambitious novel.” — Washington Post

 If you would like to learn more about this book, please read the review in The New York Times Review America’s Team.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Deacon King Kong by James McBride, a DLPP fiction finalist in 2021. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, August 10 at 7:00 p.m. EDT.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction, the Gotham Book Prize, One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year”, Oprah’s Book Club Pick, named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine, and A Washington Post Notable Novel.

From the author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters– caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York– overlap in unexpected ways. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Bringing to these pages both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel every bit as involving as The Good Lord Bird and as emotionally honest as The Color of Water. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.

 If you want to learn more about this novel, please read the review in The New York Times James McBride’s ‘Deacon King Kong’ Is a Supercharged Urban Farce Lit Up by Thunderbolts of Rage, by the former DLPP fiction winner, Junot Díaz.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading China Room by Sunjeev Sahota. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, June 15 at 7:00 p.m. EDT. 


Sunjeev Sahota is the author of three novels: China Room, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal; The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature; and Ours are the Streets. In 2013, he was named one of Granta’s Twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the decade. He lives in Sheffield, England, with his family.


LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE

FINALIST FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S CARNEGIE MEDAL

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2021 BY NPR, TIME, AND THE STAR-TRIBUNE


“An intimate page-turner with a deeper resonance as a tale of oppression, independence and resilience.”
San Francisco Chronicle


A transfixing, “powerfully imaged” (USA Today) novel about two unforgettable characters seeking to free themselves—one from the expectations of women in early twentieth-century Punjab, and the other from the weight of life in the contemporary Indian diaspora.


“Sahota is an enormously gifted writer . . . a bold storyteller who seems to have learned as many tricks from TV as from Tolstoy, and has a jeweller’s unillusioned eye for the goods . . . Lovely phrases glitter . . . Sahota’s ability to shine a phrase is not bought for the usual steep formalist price, at the expense of simplicity, intimate feeling, and solid representation. He’s both camera and painter, in a literary world that often separates those novelistic tasks.”
—James Wood,
The New Yorker

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles, one of the nonfiction books nominated for this year’s prize and suggested by one of our first readers. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Wednesday, May 18 at 7:00 p.m. EDT. 


NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.


WINNER: PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly 


“A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”

—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States


In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language.


Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.


FINALIST: Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

For more information on this book, please read this New York Times review: “In One Modest Cotton Sack, a Remarkable Story of Slavery, Suffering, Love and Survival,” by Jennifer Szalai.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading The Sentence, the newest novel by our 2014 Holbrooke Winner Louise Erdrich. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion held on Tuesday, April 5 at 7:00 p.m. EDT (please note that this month, our book club is on a Tuesday).

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story—a tale of passion, a complex marriage, and a woman’s relentless errors.

The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. 

Flora, an independent bookstore’s most burdensome customer, is even more exasperating in death, deciding to haunt her favorite haunt, Birchbark Books. The name of this beloved indie will be familiar to many Minneapolitans, as it’s the real-life bookstore run by Louise Erdrich, who plays a supporting role in this love letter to books and bookstore culture. It’s also no ordinary ghost story, as the motley crew of characters, who effortlessly endear themselves to you despite their shortcomings (and maybe because of them), reckons with profound wounds, both self-inflicted and societal. Readers, this novel just might compel you to confront some of your own, as well. That’s what the best books do.
—Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor

Among Erdrich’s most magical novels…The Sentence is a ghost story that hovers between the realms of historical horror and cultural comedy…Moving at its own peculiar rhythm with a scope that feels somehow both cloistered and expansive, it captures a traumatic year in the history of a nation struggling to appreciate its own diversity.
—Ron Charles, Washington Post

If you would like to read a review of The Sentence, consider reading this review in The New Yorker, Louise Erdrich’s Spectral Novel of the Moment.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood. The discussion will be held on Wednesday, March 2 at 7:00 p.m. EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.

Wil is well-known to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize readers as his 2015 book, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America was a finalist for the 2015 DLPP Nonfiction Award (this would be an especially important book to read in light of the upcoming Supreme Court nomination). Wil was a featured speaker in our “Evening for Peace and Justice” at the Victoria in 2017.  His book Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing was the DLPP Nonfiction Runner-up in 2019 and was the DLPP Author Series book read by hundreds of Dayton area students in 2020. Wil has also served as a presenter and an MC at our awards ceremonies and is a member of our Honorary Advisory Board. We are delighted that he will be joining us for the discussion on March 2.

A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of the Year • Booklists’ Editor’s Choice • One of NPR’s Best Book of the Year

“At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.”
—Scott Neumyer, Shondaland

“This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America.”
—From the author of The Butler and Showdown

Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood’s first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes.

He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others.

An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.Before the discussion, if you have time make sure to watch these five must-see movies the celebrate black film history.

  • Imitation of Life: Based on the novel Imitation of Life by Fannie Hurst, this film offers “a very heartbreaking, searing look at the interior of a Black family” by presenting a young woman who is “passing” as white and the effect that has on her relationship with her mother.
  • The Lilies of the Field: In this historic film—for which Sidney Poitier became the first Black man to win a leading actor Oscar—”race is never mentioned. And that’s very interesting, because at the time the film came out in 1963, race was everywhere in American society.” The fable-esque story about an itinerant worker and a group of nuns is based on a 1962 novel by William  Edmund Barrett.
  • Shaft: There’s nothing like a good detective story—and until 1971, there was really nothing like Shaft, the film based on Ernest Tidyman’s book of the same name. “American audiences had been used to seeing white detectives. But now you had on a sixty-foot screen a Black detective who had a swagger about himself.”
  • Do The Right Thing: Spike Lee is a director who needs no real introduction today, but his third full-length feature, Do the Right Thing, made him an icon to audiences of all races. “A film about race and ethnic rivalries . . . you see the rivalries and the misunderstandings between Italians and Blacks . . . that really helped ignite Spike Lee’s career.” Don’t miss the companion book penned by Spike Lee and Lisa Jones.
  • Lee Daniel’s The Butler: Inspired by Haygood’s Washington Post article “A Butler Well Served by This Election,” and subsequent book The Butler: A Witness to History, this “big, sweeping Civil Rights movie” holds a special place in Haygood’s heart: “I had a chance to meet the real-life butler that the character is based on in the movie.”

Read the NYTimes review of Colorization by Dwight Garner.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading The Mountains Sing by Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, the 2021 Fiction Runner-up. Quế Mai joined us in November for the award ceremony and delighted the audiences with her enthusiasm and perspectives.  DLPP’s own Viet Thanh Nguyen championed the book as providing the missing voice on the Vietnam War. The discussion will be held on Wednesday, January 19 at 7:00 p.m. EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.

[An] absorbing, stirring novel . . . that, in more than one sense, remedies history.”
The New York Times Book Review

“A triumph, a novelistic rendition of one of the most difficult times in Vietnamese history . . . Vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.”
—VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the BanyanThe Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.

The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English.

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review broadcast on NPR Thoughtline, ‘The Mountains Sing’ A Song of Many Voices.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Jordan Ritter Conn’s The Road From Raqqa: A Story of Brothers, Borders, and Belonging, the 2021 Nonfiction Runner-up. Jordan spent the weekend of the 2021 Gala in Dayton and many of you were able to hear him share a few words about the book. The discussion will be held on Wednesday, December 15 at 7:00 p.m. EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.


“Crossing years and continents, the harrowing story of the road to reunion for two Syrian brothers who—despite a homeland at war and an ocean between them—hold fast to the bonds of family.”

“Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • Riveting . . . a resplendent love letter to an obliterated city.”
The New York Times


The Road from Raqqa had me gripped from the first page. I couldn’t put it down.”
–Christy Lefteri, the 2020 Fiction Runner-up for The Beekeeper of Aleppo


“Jordan Ritter Conn writes with a novelist’s grace, giving us both sides of the family’s epic migration story as the brothers find themselves on opposing sides of global conflict and keep trying to find each other again and again, despite the way the world pulls them in different directions. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Helen Thorpe, author of The Newcomers

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review in the New York Times Review of Books: Two Syrian Brothers, One Longing to Stay, the Other Determined to Leave.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading the 2021 Fiction Winner We Germans by Alexander Starritt and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, November 3 at 7:00 p.m. EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.


We Germans is the DLPP 2021 Fiction Winner. Of Scottish and German descent and now living in London, Alexander will be joining us in Dayton for the celebration weekend, November 13 and 14.  Tickets for the Conversation with the Authors at the Victoria Theatre on November 13 at 4:30 are available through Dayton Live at all price points.  Ticket prices range from $20.00 to $150.00.

A letter from a German soldier to his grandson recounts the terrors of war on the Eastern Front, and a postwar ordinary life in search of atonement, in this “raw, visceral, and propulsive” novel (New York Times Book Review).

From the NY Times Book Review:

In the throes of the Second World War, young Meissner, a college student with dreams of becoming a scientist, is drafted into the German army and sent to the Eastern Front. But soon his regiment collapses in the face of the onslaught of the Red Army, hell-bent on revenge in its race to Berlin. Many decades later, now an old man reckoning with his past, Meissner pens a letter to his grandson explaining his actions, his guilt as a Nazi participator, and the difficulty of life after war.

The citation is written by Richard Bausch, a 2021 Fiction Judge and the 2009 DLPP Fiction Winner for his novel Peace.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading the 2021 Finalist When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, October 6 at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.

When Time Stopped, a masterful first book for Neumann is an un-put-downable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life. In uncovering her father’s story after all these years, she discovers nuance and depth to her own history and liberates poignant and thought-provoking truths about the threads of humanity that connect us all.

The story Neumann uncovers is worthy of fiction with hairpin plot twists, daredevil acts of love and unexpected moments of humor in dark times. Given the slew of colorful characters and dramatic details, she could have turned her painstaking research into a historical novel. Instead she has written a superb family memoir that unfolds its poignant power on multiple levels.”—The New York Times Book Review

For more information, read the entire review, A box of Secrets Led to the Story of Her Father’s Painful Wartime Past–The New York Times Book Review,or better yet, read the book and join us for the discussion.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the discussion will be held on Tuesday, August 24 at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.

Homegoing is the DLPP 2017 Fiction Runner-Up and Yaa Gyassi will be the author featured in the 2021 Student Author Series. Students from throughout our area and beyond will be reading the book and hearing the author in person locally and virtually if out of the area. Books will be provided to students through the DLPP Fly with the Doves Membership Program.
 

Homegoing garnered glowing reviews:

“Powerful. . . . Gyasi has delivered something unbelievably tough to pull off: a centuries-spanning epic of interlinked short stories. . . . She has a poet’s ability to paint a scene with a handful of phrases.” The Christian Science Monitor

“Thanks to Ms. Gyasi’s instinctive storytelling gifts, the book leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries. . . . By its conclusion, the characters’ tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight.” The New York Times

Homegoing weaves a spectacular epic. . . . Gyasi gives voice not just to a single person or moment, but to a resonant chorus of eight generations.” Los Angeles Review of Books

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review in the New York Times written by Isabel Wilkerson, the 2011 DLPP Nonfiction Runner-up The Warmth of Other Suns and her new sensational book Caste. Isabel Wilkerson Reviews Yaa Gyasi’s ‘Homegoing’.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Sadness is a White Bird and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, July 7 at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating and the author will be joining us virtually for the discussion.

Sadness is a White Bird was a 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Fiction Finalist and a 2018 National Jewish Book Award Finalist for Debut Fiction. Moriel, an Israeli-American novelist and poet, is a neighbor in that he and his wife Kayla and daughter Nahar live in Yellow Springs where his father and grandfather were professors at Antioch College.  Moriel is a world citizen, however, having lived in both the U.S. and Israel. He is a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and received a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellowship for Literature. His writing has been published in The New York TimesThe Paris Review’s “The Daily,” Haaretz, and elsewhere.

The DLPP 2010 Lifetime Achievement Winner Geraldine Brooks says of this book: “Unflinching in its honesty, unyielding in its moral complexity.” 

Novelist Michael Chabon remarked:  “Nuanced, sharp, and beautifully written, Sadness Is a White Bird manages, with seeming effortlessness, to find something fresh and surprising and poignant in the classic coming-of-age, love-triangle narrative, something starker, more heartbreaking: something new.” 

“Conveys the complexities of Israeli and Palestinian life with passion, nuance and tenderness… Rothman-Zecher is an incredibly talented young writer…He has shown a fearlessness and vulnerability on these pages that speak to his ability to explore difficult terrain without feeling the need to draw any neat or concise conclusions. That is the gray matter of great fiction. It shuns certainty and is open, nuanced, inconclusive and often contradictory. Just like Israeli reality.”
 —Jerusalem Post

To learn more about this book, read the review in the Washington Independent Review of Books by Philip K. Jason entitled Sadness Is a White Bird: A Novel.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes to life in this devastating tale of friendship and tragedy.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Jennifer Eberhardt’s Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, the 2020 DLPP Nonfiction Runner-up and a book that should be a universal read.  Bryan Stevenson, DLPP’s 2015 Nonfiction Winner for Just Mercy calls it “Groundbreaking,” and we hope it will lead to bias breaking.  Ms. Eberhardt will be with us in November for the awards ceremony.

A little about the book from the publisher:

From one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious racial bias comes stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time.

How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society—in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system. Yet she also offers us tools to address it. Eberhardt shows us how we can be vulnerable to bias but not doomed to live under its grip. Racial bias is a problem that we all have a role to play in solving.

“The hope for progress is greatly increased by Jennifer Eberhardt’s groundbreaking new book on implicit bias. Biased presents the science of bias with rare insight and accessibility, but it is also a work with the power and craft to make us see why overcoming racial bias is so critical.”
—Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy, DLPP 2015 Nonfiction Winner

Additional reviews:

“A fascinating new book… [Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is] a genius.”
—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

“Groundbreaking.”
Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy

“Powerful…useful for those new to the topic as well as those well-versed in the topic. Eberhardt abandons the jargon-speak of academic research and speaks to the reader’s head, heart, and soul [and] will make you think about the news, your neighborhood, your work place and yourself with fresh eyes.”
—Forbes

“An immensely informative and insightful analysis of race-based stereotypes. [Eberhardt] also offers practical suggestions for managing mechanisms of prejudice that ‘are rooted in the structures of our brains.’”
—Psychology Today

“Explores the reasons for bias of all kinds — racial, religious, gender and more — and lays out research-based strategies that can short-circuit our initial prejudices.”
—New York Post

“[A] timely, exhaustive investigation of how bias infiltrates every sector of public and private life… Eberhardt offers tips for reforming business practices, police departments, and day-to-day interactions in pursuit of a fairer world for everyone.”
Esquire.com

About the Author:

Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a professor of psychology at Stanford and a recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “genius” grant. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was named one of Foreign Policy‘s 100 Leading Global Thinkers. She is co-founder and co-director of SPARQ (Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions), a Stanford Center that brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading the 2020 Fiction Runner-up, The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri who will be in Dayton in November for the celebration of the 2020 winners. The discussion will be held on Wednesday, April 28th at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion. 

Based upon her personal experience of working in Greece at a refugee camp for women and children displaced by war, Christy Lefteri puts human faces on the Syrian war with the immigrant story of a beekeeper, his wife, and the triumph of spirit when the world becomes unrecognizable.

As reviewed in Time , “[Christy] Lefteri sensitively charts what it’s like when war comes home, alert to the subtle effects of trauma and grief. Nuri and Afra are not broadly sketched as victims, but rather suffer in different and complex ways from PTSD. . . By creating characters with such rich, complex inner lives, Lefteri shows that in order to stretch compassion to millions of people, it helps to begin with one.”Time 

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review in The Irish Times by Sorcha Pollak entitled The Beekeeper of Aleppo:  Fictionalising the Refugee Crisis from Personal Experience.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Chanel Miller’s Know My Name: A Memoir and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, March 24 at 7:00 EST.  Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion.

Know My Name is the DLPP 2020 Nonfiction Winner and will be celebrated this coming fall.  The book has a strong Dayton connection and has received rave reviews from our first readers and final judges and critics and readers everywhere.

“Universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Chanel Miller’s breathtaking memoir ‘gives readers the privilege of knowing her not just as Emily Doe, but as Chanel Miller the writer, the artist, the survivor, the fighter.’”
The Wrap

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review in The New York Times Review of Books: ‘Know My Name,’ a Sexual Assault Survivor Tells the World

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club. We will be reading Andrew Krivak’s The Signal Flame and the discussion will be held on Wednesday, February 17 at 7:00 EST.  Ron Rollins, former editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News will be moderating the discussion.

The Signal Flame is the second book in Krivak’s trilogy; his most recent work The Bear being the third.  The first book The Sojourn was the 2012 Fiction Winner for the DLPP.  Andrew discusses the first book of the trilogy on our Turn the Page event The Legacy of War that features Andrew and Richard Bausch, author of the 2009 DLPP Fiction winner Peace.  Watch the video here.

Other former DLPP winners respond to The Signal Flame:

“This is a novel of tremendous sorrow and tremendous beauty. Of love shaped by war, and of how the past haunts the present, and shapes the future. An incandescent work.”
—Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings and The Book of Night Women, the 2011 DLPP Fiction Winner 

“The language in this beautiful book is as textured and rich—as quiet and grand and unforgettable—as its setting: a small Pennsylvania town tucked in the mountains. It isn’t often that a story finds me making comparisons to literary greats from the first page. This is one of those books. In the end, what Krivák does is something all his own, and it is a triumph.” 
Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion’s Gaze  2011 DLPP Fiction Runner-up

There are many pleasures to be found in The Signal Flame: The intimacy and love with which Krivak writes about his postage stamp of rural Pennsylvania. His keen sense of time and place, the woods and forests and hills of the Endless Mountains. Page by page the book itself feels like an outgrowth of the soil in in which it is steeped. 
—Brad Kessler, author of Birds in Fall 2007 DLPP Fiction Winner

To learn more about this beautiful book, read the review in the New York Times Review of Books: For Two Small-Town Families, War is the Tie That Binds

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club on Wednesday, January 28, at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, retired editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News, is the host. January’s  featured book is Lila by Marilynne Robinson, the 2016 recipient of the DLPP Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

Lila is the third book of the Gilead Series.  (Robinson’s recently released Jack, is the fourth.)  For those who have read Gilead, and Home, Lila would be a familiar character, as she is the wife of Rev. Ames, the central character of the series.   Lila, however, tells her story, and it is an amazing one of an abandoned little girl who grows into a wise and lovely woman.

Diane Johnson of The New York Times explains, “Central to all the novel’s characters are matters of high literary seriousness — the basic considerations of the human condition; the moral problems of existence; the ache of being abandoned; the struggles of the aging; the role of the Bible and God in daily life.”  It is a novel of struggle and hope and a fitting read for the beginning of 2021. 

The following review from The New Yorker will give you a sense of the power of this novel: Lonesome Road, Marilynne Robinson returns to Gilead in her new novel. By Joan Acocella

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club on Wednesday, December 16, at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, recently retired editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News, is the host. December’s featured book is The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman, the 2020 recipient of the DLPP Fiction Award. Alice will be in Dayton for the gala weekend in June celebrating this year’s winners.

“Oh, what a book this is! Hoffman’s exploration of the world of good and evil, and the constant contest between them, is unflinching; and the humanity she brings to us—it is a glorious experience. The book builds and builds, as she weaves together, seamlessly, the stories of people in the most desperate of circumstances—and then it delivers with a tremendous punch. It opens up the world, the universe, in a way that it absolutely unique. By the end you may be weeping.”—ELIZABETH STROUT, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge

The following review will give you a sense of the power of this novel: Alice Hoffman Brings Magical Realism to the Holocaust Novel.

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club on Wednesday, November 16, at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, recently retired editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News, is the host. November’s featured book is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, one of the 2020 Finalists for the DLPP Fiction Award.

Mr. Colson has written seven books of fiction and two books of nonfiction over a 20-year career. He became only the second writer of color and sixth writer ever to win both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for the same novel, The Undergound Railroad.

The Nickel Boys, based on the notorious institution built in 1900 and originally known as the Florida State Reform School, follows two Black boys who suffer the beatings and abuses that had become the subject of damning reports for decades up until it closed in 2011, then known as the Dozier School for Boys. For more background, please read the Frank Rich review in the New York Times, In ‘The Nickel Boys,’ Colson Whitehead Depicts a Real-Life House of Horrors.

 

Please join us for the next Dayton Literary Peace Prize Virtual Book Club on Wednesday, October 21, at 7:00 EST. Ron Rollins, recently retired editor of Ideas and Voices for the Dayton Daily News, is the host. October’s featured book is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, the 2020 recipient of the DLPP Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic now in its 4th season as a television series on Hulu. Atwood insists that The Handmaid’s Tale is not science fiction, but it tells the story of Offred in the new regime in an oppressive parallel America of the future. This article in the New York Times is an interview with Atwood on whether her dystopian classic is meant as a “feminist” novel, as antireligion or as a prediction.

 

In the thousands of Google alerts about our authors, no one is referenced more than Wendell Berry. The variety of sources that quote him reflects the expanse of his talent as he is revered by environmentalists, ministers, sociologists, farmers, poets, novelists, essayists, political activists, and his neighbors. His work embodies the vast expanses of human experience with a simplicity that is elegant and profound. If you have not picked up a book by Wendell Berry, this is a perfect time to get to know him, and Jaber Crow is the perfect book.

 Here is a brief recommendation from Jason Craig of the National Catholic Register

Jayber Crow follows Jayber (not his real name), an essentially orphaned boy, as he moves from belonging to disorientation, from the pseudo-freedom a young man thinks he wants to re-finding home, place and people. We can think of Jayber as a sort of priest, since he eventually makes an offering of himself for love that even results in a voluntary celibacy. He cleans the local church and even digs the graves for the dead. His main work of barbering, as one of his customers puts it, is not really a “line of work” but more of a position held, a vocation. In a time when belonging and place are things we simply don’t possess, and work is a means of paying bills but void of meaning, Jayber Crow is a potent read. In a time of social distancing, this novel will remind us how important the people near us really are.

 

Margaret Wrinkles debut novel Wash was the 2014 DLPP Fiction Runner-Up, and over the last six years, Margaret has generously returned to Dayton numerous times to share her insights into our past and her writing process that makes Wash an unforgettable story. Margaret takes us from Tennessee to West Africa and brings us back again as she explores the soul of the South.

“The voices of the past can’t speak for themselves and must rely on the artists of the future to honor them. It’s a profound responsibility and one that Margaret Wrinkle meets in her brilliant novel Wash. She shows not only the courage to submerge herself in the Stygian world of plantation slavery but also the grace and sensitivity to bring that world to life . . . Narrative roles are given to Wash, fellow slaves and his succession of masters, creating a dense, hypnotic ensemble of voices. It’s from patriarchs like Wash, Ms. Wrinkle shows, that the U.S. was born.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

The members of the DLPP book club chose Wash so we can continue to explore the basis for the call for justice we continue to hear today. Please join us for a rich discussion of our past and our present.

Ron Rollins, recently retired Dayton Daily News Ideas and Voices Editor, will moderate the discussion.

 

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Jesmyn Ward, a three-time finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, won the National Book Award for Sing, Unburied, Sing. Her work can educate us about the racial issues facing America today. Please join us in July to discuss this important book.

“The heart of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing is story—the yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps we’ll never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song…Ward’s writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it.” —Buzzfeed

Ron Rollins, recently retired Dayton Daily News Ideas and Voices Editor, will moderate the discussion.

 

Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman

New York Times Bestseller

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Ron Rollins, newly retired Dayton Daily News Ideas and Voices Editor, will moderate the discussion. Congratulations, Ron!

Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders

“Plague stories remind us that we cannot manage without community . . . Year of Wonders is a testament to that very notion.” – The Washington Post

An unforgettable tale, set in 17th century England, of a village that quarantines itself to arrest the spread of the plague, from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Ron Rollins, Dayton Daily News Ideas and Voices Editor, will moderate the discussion of The Year of Wonders.

Panel Discussion of "Rising Out of Hatred" at Clark County Public Library, July 28, 2020​

On July 28, 2020, One Book, Many Communities organized a panel discussion on Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow. This book was the nonfiction winner of 2019 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

The event was held at the Clark County Public Library in Springfield, Ohio. The panelists (see photo below) included:

  • Faheem Curtis-Khidr, History Professor, Sinclair Community College
  • Marc DeWitt, Coordinator, African American Male Initiative, Sinclair Community College
  • Furaha Henry-Jones, English Professor, Sinclair Community College
  • Lynette Jones, Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures, Wright State University
  • Tiffany Taylor Smith, Executive Director for Inclusive Excellence Education, University of Dayton

The moderator was Vick Mickunas, the host of WYSO’s Book Nook weekly radio program.

Project Partners included: One Book, Many Communities, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, WYSO, Sinclair Community College, Wright State University and the University of Dayton. Participating libraries include: Arcanum Public Library, Bradford Public Library, Brown Memorial Public Library, Cardington-Lincoln Public Library, Champaign County Library, Clark County Public Library, J. R. Clark Public Library, Edison State Community College, Greenville Public Library, Marvin Memorial Library, Milton-Union Public Library, New Carlisle Public Library, New Madison Public Library, Piqua Public Library, Selover Public Library, St. Paris Public Library, Tipp City Public Library, Tri-County North School District, Troy-Miami County Public Library, Worch Memorial Public Library and Wornstaff Memorial Public Library.

Selected response to the last question:
"Are any of you feeling hopeful?"

“At the end of the day, I do this because I know I can make a difference. And it’s the people I come in contact with who want to make a difference with me and and we do that work together. That for me [is] the hope because I see it – I see the glimmers in my children’s eyes as they think about what they are capable of, what what they want to accomplish, what we’ve instilled in them, what my parents instilled in me and my brother and my sister, and we see it in our children. … For me it’s the hope and and knowing that … I may not see it in my lifetime, but I’d like to think for my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, the work that we are doing and and the shoulders that we stand on … we can accomplish what we accomplish because of the people who came before us and they had hope.”

Tiffany Taylor Smith
University of Dayton

Back row from left to right:

Tiffany Taylor Smith: Executive Director for Inclusive Excellence Education, University of Dayton
Vick Mickunas: Host – Book Nook, WYSO
Bill Martino: Library Director, Clark County Public Library
Marc DeWitt: Coordinator, African American
Male Initiative, Sinclair Community College

Front row from left to right:

Drew Wichterman: Adult Services Librarian, Tipp City Public Library
Faheem Curtis-Khidr: History Professor, Sinclair Community College
Lynette Jones: Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures, Wright State University
Furaha Henry-Jones: English Professor, Sinclair Community College

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