Percival Everett’s acclaimed novel James, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is in the running for another prestigious literary award. This powerful reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a fiction finalist for the 20th annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which includes a $10,000 cash award. In addition to the Pulitzer, James has earned both the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize.
In the nonfiction category, David Greenberg’s biography John Lewis, chronicling the life of the late civil rights leader and congressman, is also a finalist, according to the Dayton Prize foundation.
Winners for both fiction and nonfiction will be announced in September.
Other contenders in fiction include Priscilla Morris’ Black Butterflies, Alejandro Puyana’s Freedom Is a Feast, Kristin Hannah’s The Women, Helen Benedict’s The Good Deed, and Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!.
The nonfiction nominees alongside John Lewis are Sunil Amrith’s The Burning Earth, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor’s Solidarity, Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War, Lauren Markham’s A Map of Future Ruins, and Wendy Pearlman’s The Home I Worked to Make.
Founded in 1995 and named after the historic Dayton peace agreements that ended the war in Bosnia, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize honors authors whose work highlights the power of literature to promote peace and understanding.
Past winners include Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power.
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