Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hala Alyan Earn Dayton Literary Peace Prize | Colorlines The prize recognizes works that promote cross-cultural understanding and the concept of peace.

The Jurors recognized a Palestinian-American poet’s debut novel about a Palestinian family’s generational displacement, and an African-American journalist’s reflections on the presidency of Barack Obama, with this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

The Associated Press reports today (September 19) that Hala Alyan’s “Salt Houses” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years in Power” earned this year’s prizes for fiction and nonfiction, respectively. An announcement notes that the prize began with inspiration from the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords and recognizes literature that “promote[s] peace, social justice and global understanding.”