Will debut authors Tommy Orange and Tara Westover add even more awards to their already overflowing shelves?
The two bestselling authors are among the finalists for this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an annual award given to authors whose books “have led readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view.”
The awards are given in fiction and nonfiction categories. This year’s fiction nominees include Orange’s novel There There, which previously won the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Orange will be competing with five other fiction finalists: Insurrecto by Gina Apostol, Sadness Is A White Bird by Moriel Rothman Zecher, The Overstory by Richard Powers, What We Owe by Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde, and White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht.
Westover’s memoir, Educated, a bestseller that was named the American Bookseller Association’s Book of the Yearand won the Goodreads Choice Award for Autobiography, is one of six nonfiction books up for this year’s prize.
The other finalists include Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David Blight, I Should Have Honor by Khalida Brohi, Rising Out of Hatred by Eli Saslow, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Hinton with Lara Love Hardin, and Tigerland by Wil Haygood.
The winners of the awards, who each receive a $10,000 cash prize, will be announced on Sept. 17.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
