Announced yesterday, the recipient of the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize [2] is Richard Bausch [3], for his eleventh novel, Peace, published by Knopf in April. He will receive ten thousand dollars, and the runner-up, Uwem Akpan, whose honored short story collection Say You're One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008) was recently named an Oprah's Book Club pick [4], will receive one thousand dollars.

Bausch's winning novel follows American soldiers in Italy during World War II as they pursue the German army. The prize press release calls the book a "meditation on the corrosiveness of violence, the human cost of war, and the redemptive power of mercy."

Along with the nonfiction winner—Benjamin Skinner's A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery (Free Press)—Akpan's collection "put a much-needed spotlight on the tragedy of contemporary slavery, an issue that has been ignored for too long," says prize chair Sharon Rab in the press release. (Skinner donated his ten-thousand-dollar honorarium to Free the Slaves, the U.S. branch of the human rights organization Anti-Slavery International.)

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, given since 2006, recognizes authors whose "work advances peace as a solution to conflict, and leads readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view." The writers will be feted at a ceremony in Dayton on November 8.