Today, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, an organization that honors writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to cultivate peace, unveiled the recipients of the 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize (awarded for books published in 2025).
In the fiction category, the prize goes to The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman; the runner-up is Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore.
The nonfiction prize honors Kevin Sack’s Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church; the runner-up is Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing.
The winners will each receive a $10,000 cash award, while the runners-up will receives $5,000.
As had been announced previously, Ann Patchett has also been named the Foundation’s Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award recipient, an honor described as “bestowed upon a writer whose body of work reflects the Prize’s mission of fostering peace, social justice, and global understanding.”
