SPONSORED BY PEACE AND JUSTICE STUDIES ASSOCIATIONAND OMNI CENTER FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
ANNOUNCEMENT OF 2008 WINNERS WITH SYNOPSES
David Meth, play
9/12, a deeply felt and intense full-length play by David L. Meth, begins with a family celebration: an anniversary and the announcement of a young woman’s engagement to be married. It is followed the next day by the unexpected death of that same young woman, Bayan Daoud, a Middle Eastern graduate student whose life exemplifies the dreams of every immigrant, but now portends the disintegration of the U.S. constitution and redefines what it means to be American. When Naomi Leonard, the student’s mentor and a professor at a prestigious New York City university, learns of Bayan’s death, she is unnerved. It can’t be true. Neither can she get any specific information about how it occurred. And as the parent of two college-age children, friends of Bayan, Naomi doesn’t know what to think or say. So her husband Larry, a writer born and raised in Brooklyn, wants to take immediate action and go directly to the dean of her department. Instead, Naomi talks him out of it and tells him to go finish his latest novel at the library. On his way, however, Larry chooses to stop at one of his usual haunts to play pool and where he often works out the plot lines of his fiction. Thus begins a journey that never quite gets Larry to his destination. Because of certain books in his backpack on the infrastructure of New York City which he is using for research on how terrorists could use the internet to destroy the city, Larry Leonard is detained in some abandoned room not far from the subway platform. He is then interrogated about his extensive travels and teaching in countries in various parts of the world, especially in Asia when he was in the Peace Corps. And Naomi, who was born and raised in Japan, but is a naturalized American with a personal history that does not exactly form the pattern of the usual immigrant, is also taken into custody. Within moments, they become the subjects of an intense and secret investigation in the bowels of the New York City subway system where they are cut off from the outside world. Then their lives are completely torn apart: their daughter Mariko, an undergraduate at Brown, and their son, David, a graduate student at Yale, are also whisked away from their studies and brought in for questioning. As a result, the privacy and civil liberties of the Leonard family are decimated in the name of Homeland Security because of circumstances both past and present which, under normal conditions, would not raise questions in a free society, but which now threaten to destroy everything the Leonard family has lived and worked for, and no one in the Leonard family will give in. But also isolated are the interrogators: a senior male agent who spent time, perhaps too much time, fighting in and out of Vietnam; and a black female agent who cannot escape a heritage that she despises. Thus, as the lives of the characters begin to unravel, the layered nuances of a multi-ethnic society reveal a seething unrest that rises to the surface under the false pretenses of a very real threat, and now American citizens are forced to prove they are who they say they are and not traitors.
Monica Raymond, play
The power of fantasy to exemplify reality, when done well, is one of the most pleasurable of literary experiences. “The Owl Girl” achieves this representation perfectly. The context is war, violence, injustice of Palestine today. The fundamental fantasy and elementary, recurrent hope is the story of a Palestinian family revisiting their old home now occupied by an Israeli family, and the two families connect. The individuals of each family play out their own fantasies, some leading to death, some to transformation. The hyperactive Israeli male child finds understanding from the Palestinian father as they share the growth of grapes and warrior ideas. The Palestinian female child yearns to be an owl and to fly. The Israeli daughter and the nonviolent Palestinian son are attracted. The mothers bond, and at the end they and the children leave the house (the owl girl flying) in search of a new life together, while the fathers hunker down in the basement still hurling at each other the historical atrocities, as a bulldozer approaches. The bulldozers are coming because the Israeli father has called and reported the alien visitors. As it's forbidden to harbor those from "the other side," the government is sending in "collective punishment," destroying the entire house which has supported coexistence. But this summary fails to suggest the new microcosm of incongruous, startling growth and change created in the house of enemy families, for those who are able. PeaceWriting gives this award with a yearning we share with the author that Palestinians and Israelis—and ethnic and religious and political enemies throughout the world—will abandon the old confinements, and learn to fly. This play is sure to energize audiences toward peacemaking no matter of what ideology or geography.
Gordon Shomaker, four plays
“ Slave Ship of the Sargassos” is an engrossing, experimental play about the personal conflicts that arise on a slave ship low on water. The ethical captain tries to ration the inadequate water, while the owner of the ship and cargo treats the slaves contemptuously and insanely even tries to shoot some of them. Interspersed with this plot, spirits of notable people speak, offering contexts for the story: Sacajawea, Nat Turner, John Glasgow, State Senator James Hammond, William Lloyd Garrison, Sequoyah, and others. All slaves and crew die except for the Captain, who is at the helm at the end. The language is distinctive, often non-standard syntax with a gap-filled, jerky effect. [The flaw in this is that it is used for all the characters, instead of being used to individualize.] “Where Taketh the Wind” depicts four violent, dangerous “soldiers” who arrive at a small hotel owned and managed by a conventional woman who tries to cope with them. A lady giving away pamphlets for “peace” comes and goes during the main action. At the end the “soldiers” kill the women and each other. Each “soldier”—Mafia, IRA, Indian, Caribbean--.seethes with violence, and no matter how hard the hotel owner tries to impose her sense of normalcy it avails nothing. “Sanitation” is a dialogue between Socman, who attempts to represent the Greek philosopher, Socrates, and Van Ghost, admirer of the painter Vincent Van Gogh. Their conversation occurs at a city dump, which becomes illustrative of “a perfect scene of a potential nuclear destruction,” or of the variety of the world as it is, “this dump of a world which still retains promise.” The rag-picker Socman counsels the failed artist Van Ghost (fearing suicide) to seek the God of truth and love within. The play ends with both men strengthened by the encounter. “World Citizen” has the citizen, Felix, in a Parisian park setting up his tent in conversation with his girlfriend and his best friend, both of whom try to dissuade him from following the path of being the first “world citizen.” They want him to “come to his senses.” At the end Felix is killed in a “peace parade.” As a whole these plays make an original, important contribution to stage drama both in technique and story. PeaceWriting expects audiences who seek thoughtfulness in plays to receive these plays enthusiastically.
Dudley Weeks, novel
“Revolution of Hope” is a major achievement of a popular novel promoting nonviolence: larger-than-life hero and heroine, heroic adventures, conflict between evil ruler and his rebellious populace, danger, romance—on this surface it’s a book for Hollywood. But giving the plot its extraordinary originality is its transformation of cliché into a profound dramatization of revolutionary nonviolent agents and process. Asha Akari, the daughter of the brutal dictator of Calada and an internationally famous practitioner of nonviolent political change, Connor Rawlings, organize a nonviolent uprising to overthrow her father. Simultaneously, the US plans to invade the country violently, overthrow the dictator, and establish its presence in the region. Connor’s friends in government positions in the US try to persuade the president not to invade. Numerous adventures ensue, nonviolently for Asha and Connor and their friends, including the capture and torture of Connor. Finally, the tyrant is overthrown—nonviolently.
The relationships between Asha and Connor, and among them and the other plotters, are explored plausibly and intimately to produce a breakthrough book that offers engrossing plot and characters and hope for the future. The Wars/Warming world we have endangers our and all other species, but this novel shows us how to rescue ourselves. We in PeaceWriting expect to see the book published and widely read.
PeaceWriting seeks to encourage writing about nonviolent peacemaking and peacemakers.
PeaceWriting seeks book manuscripts about the causes, consequences, experiences,
and solutions to violence and war, and about ideas and practices of nonviolent
peacemaking and the lives of peacemakers. The manuscripts must not have
have been published nor be contracted for publication.
The Competition Guidelines:
Only full-length unpublished novels, plays, biographies, and
histories, and collections of short stories, poems, and essays will
be considered.
Play (or collection of one-act plays) must be unproduced professionally.
More than one submission acceptable.
Manuscripts must be securely bound and clearly typed, double-spaced.
PeaceWriting is not responsible for lost or damaged manuscripts.
No critiques will be given.
Manuscripts must be postmarked by December 1st of each competition year.
All submissions must include a separate, one-page synopsis of the manuscript,
a one-paragraph biography of the writer, and the author’s name and address,
which should not appear on the manuscript.
Awards will be announced by May 1 of each year.
Award Information:
Three prizes:
$500 for best non-fiction manuscript (history, biography, political
science, international law, etc.)
$500 for best imaginative work (novel, collection of short stories
or poem, play)
$500 for best work for young people (non-fiction or imaginative)
PEACEWRITING reserves the right not to award a prize in each category
if there is no suitable winner.
Manuscripts should be mailed to:
PEACEWRITING International Writing Awards
2582 JIMMIE
FAYETTEVILLE, AR 72703-3420
Attn: James R. Bennett
(501) 442-4600
