“For two decades the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has elevated the power of the written word to foster understanding, reconciliation, empathy and peace, said Nicholas Raines, executive director of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation in a press release. ”The work of this prize allows readers to step into lives and experiences vastly different from their own."
The 2025 fiction finalists are:
- “Black Butterflies” by Priscilla Morris (Alfred A. Knoph)
- “Freedom is a Feast” by Alejandro Puyana (Little, Brown and Company)
- “James” by Percival Everett (Penguin Random House, Doubleday)
- “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar (Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House US)
- “The Good Deed” by Helen Benedict (Red Hen Press)
- “The Women: A Novel” by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Publishing Group)
The 2025 nonfiction finalists are:
- “A Map of Future Ruins” by Lauren Markham (Penguin Random House, Riverhead Books)
- “John Lewis” by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster)
- “Nuclear War: A Scenario” by Annie Jacobson (Penguin Random House, Dutton)
- “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea” by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor (Pantheon Books, Penguin Random House)
- “The Burning Earth” by Sunil Amrith (W. W. Norton & Company)
- “The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora” by Wendy Pearlman (Liveright Publishing)
The organization praised its initial reading committee for their diligence.
“The DLPP is so grateful to our First Readers who provide our first round of judging — needless to say, a monumental task," Raines said. “For 2025 it took 95 DLPP First Readers to get this job done. Our First Readers are tasked to determine that books are of notable literary quality, possess the ability to be of enduring value, and will connect with a wide-ranging audience.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
He also hopes the Dayton community at large will grow more familiar with the finalists this summer.
“We encourage you to fill your summer reading list with our finalist lists,” Raines said.
Winners and finalists of the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award will be announced in September.
For more information, visit daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.
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