The Dayton Literary Peace Prize is “the first and only annual U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace.”

Their goals are:

• To promote peace by encouraging people to read, share, and appreciate literary works about peace,
• To promote the recognition of literature as a force in achieving peace, and
• To establish prizes to recognize writers and the role their books play in educating people about peace.

This year’s fiction nominees include a Nova Scotia connection with P.S. Duffy’s Cartographer of No Man’s Land.

“Nova Scotia, 1916. Angus MacGrath, a skilled sailor and navigator, is lost–caught between a remote wife, a disapproving father, and a son seeking guidance. An ocean away from his coastal village, missing is Ebbin Hant, Angus’s adventurous brother-in-law and best friend. Ebbin’s unknown fate sets Angus on an uncharted course with profound consequences for those he loves and those he comes to love. In search of his own purpose and hoping against all odds to find Ebbin, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing and enlists. Assured a safe job as a military cartographer in London, he is instead assigned to the infantry and sent to the blood-soaked mud of the front-line trenches in France, where he begins his search. At home his young son, Simon Peter, once wide-eyed about the war–clipping stories and sneaking propaganda–must navigate uncertain loyalties in a village succumbing to war fever. Separated by the ocean they once sailed together, Angus and Simon Peter search for what it takes to survive, each trying in his own way to return to the other.” Discover

The shortlist also includes:

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Someone by Alice McDermott
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis
Wash by Margaret Wrinkle