 
 The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is an annual United States literary award "recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace" that was first awarded in 2006. [1] Awards are given for adult fiction and non-fiction books published at some point within the immediate past year that have led readers to a better understanding of other peoples, cultures, religions, and political views, with the winner in each category receiving a cash prize of $10,000. [1] The award is an offshoot of the Dayton Peace Prize, which grew out of the 1995 peace accords ending the Bosnian War. [2] In 2011, the former "Lifetime Achievement Award" was renamed the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award with a $10,000 honorarium.
In 2008, Martin Luther King Jr. biographer Taylor Branch joined Studs Terkel and Elie Wiesel as a recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award, [3] which was presented to him special guest Edwin C. Moses. [4] The 2008 ceremony was held in Dayton, Ohio, on September 28, 2008. [3] Nick Clooney, who hosted the ceremony in 2007, [5] again served as the evening's host in 2008 [6] and 2009. [7]
The 2009 ceremony was held in Dayton, Ohio, on November 8, 2009, [7] at which married authors and journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award. [8]
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. | 
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Stephen Walker | Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima | Winner | [9] | 
| Adam Hochschild | Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves | Runner-up | [9] | |
| 2007 | Mark Kurlansky | Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea | Winner | [10] [11] | 
| Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin | Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time | Runner-up | [10] [11] | |
| 2008 | Edwidge Danticat | Brother, I'm Dying | Winner | [12] [45] | 
| Cullen Murphy | Are We Rome | Runner-up | [12] | |
| 2009 | Benjamin Skinner | A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face with Modern Day Slavery | Winner | [14] | 
| Thomas Friedman | Hot, Flat, and Crowded | Runner-up | [14] | |
| Nicholson Baker | Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization | Finalist | [15] | |
| Joan Baxter | Dust from our Eyes: An Unblinkered Look at Africa | Finalist | [15] | |
| David Grossman | Writing in the Dark | Finalist | [15] | |
| Ariel Sabar | My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Father's Past | Finalist | [15] | |
| Strobe Talbott | The Great Experiment | Finalist | [15] | |
| 2010 | Dave Eggers | Zeitoun | Winner | [16] [17] | 
| Justine Hardy | In the Valley of Mist | Runner-up | [16] | |
| Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman | Enough: Why the Worlds Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty | Finalist | [18] | |
| Greg Mortenson | Stones into Schools | Finalist | [18] | |
| Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman | Tears in the Darkness: the Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath | Finalist | [18] | |
| Chinua Achebe | The Education of a British-Protected Child | Finalist | [18] | |
| 2011 | Wilbert Rideau | In The Place Of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance | Winner | [19] [17] | 
| Isabel Wilkerson | The Warmth of Other Suns | Runner-up | [19] | |
| Kai Bird | Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956–1978 | Finalist | [20] | |
| Conor Grennan | Little Princes | Finalist | [20] | |
| Laura Hillenbrand | Unbroken | Finalist | [20] | |
| Mac McClelland | For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question | Finalist | [20] | |
| 2012 | Adam Hochschild | To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 | Winner | [22] [23] | 
| Annia Ciezadlo | Day of Honey | Runner-up | [22] [23] | |
| Caroline Moorehead | A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France | Finalist | [24] | |
| Leymah Gbowee | Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War: A Memoir | Finalist | [24] | |
| Karl Marlantes | What It Is Like to Go to War | Finalist | [24] | |
| 2013 | Andrew Solomon | Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | Winner | [25] | 
| Gilbert King | Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America | Runner-up | [25] | |
| Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity | Finalist | [26] | |
| Carmen Bugan | Burying the Typewriter | Finalist | [26] | |
| Blaine Harden | Escape from Camp 14 | Finalist | [26] | |
| Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac | Pax Ethnica | Finalist | [26] | |
| 2014 | Karima Bennoune | Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here | Winner | [28] | 
| Jo Roberts | Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel's Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe | Runner-up | [28] | |
| Steve McQuiddy | Here on the Edge: How a Small Group of World War II Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream | Finalist | [29] | |
| Katy Butler | Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death | Finalist | [29] | |
| Jesmyn Ward | Men We Reaped: A Memoir | Finalist | [29] | |
| David Finkel | Thank You for Your Service | Finalist | [29] | |
| 2015 | Bryan Stevenson | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Winner | [30] | 
| Jeff Hobbs | The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace | Runner-up | [30] | |
| Elizabeth D. Samet | No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America | Finalist | [31] | |
| Lacy Johnson | The Other Side | Finalist | [31] | |
| Meline Toumani | There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond | Finalist | [31] | |
| Jeff Chang | Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America | Finalist | [31] | |
| 2016 | Susan Southard | Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War | Winner | [32] | 
| Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner | Find Me Unafraid | Runner-up | [32] | |
| Ta-Nehisi Coates | Between the World and Me | Finalist | [35] | |
| Wil Haygood | Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America | Finalist | [35] | |
| Wab Kinew | The Reason You Walk | Finalist | [35] | |
| Jan Jarboe Russell | The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II | Finalist | [35] | |
| 2017 | David Wood | What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars | Winner | [36] | 
| Ben Rawlence | City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp | Runner-up | [36] | |
| 2018 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy | Winner | [39] [34] | 
| Michelle Kuo | Reading with Patrick | Runner-up | [39] | |
| 2019 | Eli Saslow | Rising Out of Hatred | Winner | [41] | 
| Wil Haygood | Tigerland | Runner-up | [41] | |
| Tara Westover | Educated | Finalist | [42] | |
| David W. Blight | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom | Finalist | [42] | |
| Khalida Brohi | I Should Have Honor | Finalist | [42] | |
| Anthony Hinton with Lara Love Hardin | The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row | Finalist | [42] | |
| 2020 | Chanel Miller | Know My Name | Winner | [43] [44] [45] | 
| Jennifer Eberhardt | The Beekeeper of Aleppo | Runner-up | [43] [44] | |
| 2021 | Ariana Neumann | When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains | Winner | [47] | 
| Jordan Ritter Conn | The Road from Raqqa | Runner-up | [47] | |
| Toni Jenson | Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land | Finalist | [44] | |
| Isabel Wilkerson | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Finalist | [44] | |
| Valarie Kaur | See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love | Finalist | [44] | |
| Michele Harper | The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir | Finalist | [44] | |
| 2022 | Clint Smith | How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America | Winner | [48] | 
| Andrea Elliott | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City | Runner-up | [48] | |
| Amanda Ripley | High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out | Finalist | [48] | |
| Shugri Said Salh | The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert: A Memoir | Finalist | [48] | |
| Heather McGhee | The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together | Finalist | [48] | |
| Evan Osnos | Wildland: The Making of America's Fury | Finalist | [48] | |
| 2023 | Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Winner | [49] | 
| Adam Hochschild | American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis | Runner-up | [49] | |
| Catherine Ceniza Choy | Asian American Histories of the United States | Finalist | [49] | |
| Putsata Reang | Ma and Me: A Memoir | Finalist | [49] | |
| Ben Rawlence | The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth | Finalist | [49] | |
| Ghafari with Hannah Lucinda Smith | Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World | Finalist | [49] | |
| 2024 | Victor Luckerson | Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street | Winner | [50] | 
| Tania Branigan | Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution | Runner-up | [50] | |
| Edwin Raymond with Jon Sternfeld | An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America | Finalist | [50] | |
| Dana Sachs | All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis | Finalist | [50] | |
| Darrin Bell | The Talk | Finalist | [50] | |
| Dina Nayeri | Who Gets Believed?: When the Truth Isn't Enough | Finalist | [50] | |
| 2025 | Sunil Amrith | The Burning Earth: A History | Winner | [51] | 
| Lauren Markham | A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging | Runner-up | [51] | |
| David Greenberg | John Lewis: A Life | Finalist | [51] | |
| Leah Hunt-Lendrix and Astra Taylor | Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea | Finalist | [51] | |
| Annie Jacobsen | Nuclear War: A Scenario | Finalist | [51] | |
| Wendy Pearlman | The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora | Finalist | [51] | 
| Year | Author | Ref. | 
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Studs Terkel | [9] | 
| 2007 | Elie Wiesel | [10] [11] | 
| 2008 | Taylor Branch | [12] | 
| 2009 | Nicholas Kristof | [14] [15] | 
| Sheryl WuDunn | [14] [15] | 
| Year | Author | Ref. | 
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Geraldine Brooks | [16] [52] | 
| 2011 | Barbara Kingsolver | [17] [53] | 
| 2012 | Tim O'Brien | [54] | 
| 2013 | Wendell Berry | [55] | 
| 2014 | Louise Erdrich | [56] [57] | 
| 2015 | Gloria Steinem | [58] | 
| 2016 | Marilynne Robinson | [59] | 
| 2017 | Colm Tóibín | [60] | 
| 2018 | John Irving | [61] | 
| 2019 | N. Scott Momaday | [62] [63] | 
| 2020/2021 | Margaret Atwood | [47] [64] | 
| 2022 | Wil Haygood | [48] | 
| 2023 | Sandra Cisneros | [65] | 
| 2024 | Jimmy Carter | [66] | 
| 2025 | Salman Rushdie | [67] |