IMAGINATIVE WRITING: In 2007, two awards were given:
David Krieger, “The Doves Flew High: Fifty Poems of Peace”
Stuart Stelly, “Played Under Protest: A Play in Three Acts”
NON-FICTION WRITING: In 2007, two awards were given:
Olga Bonfiglio, “Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to the War in Iraq”
Barry Gan, “Out of the Ashes of Violence: The Elements of Nonviolence”
WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: Ken Beller and Heather Chase, “Great Peacemakers”
PEACE WRITING AWARDS 2006
SPECIAL AWARDS ($500)
Catherine Filloux, Lemkin’s House (play)
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer whose family died in the Holocaust, invented the word genocide and dedicated his life (he died in 1959) to convincing the U. S. to declare it an international crime, which it did in 1988.
But this is a pessimistic story of evil and pain in the world outweighing goodness and happiness: after the U. S. finally signed his law (the 98th country to do so), two of the world’s bloodiest genocides occurred.
Filloux imagines what would happen if the atrocities that occurred after Lemkin’s law was passed hounded him in the afterlife. When ghosts of the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides confront him, and eventually end up a row of corpses draped in UN, EU, and US flags, Lemkin must recognize that even his law is not enough to change the world. Furthermore, he must weigh his accomplishments against his failures for deserting his family for his crusade. Lemkin, the dead, are haunted by both the living and the dead.
The questions raised by the play challenge our hopes. Why, when genocide has long been officially recognized as a crime against humanity, is the world community still so feeble in preventing and punishing it? This question has again urgent power as the slaughter that is Darfur (Sudan) continues unabated.
An intensely focused, tormented, tormenting, unforgettable play .
Molly and Nancy Hersage, The Perfect Endgame (play)
This play chronicles the tensions and conflicts of present-day multicultural immigrant Londoners as they try to cope with the cultural, ethnic, and religious conflicts of post-colonial and post-9-11 Britain. Everyone is captured by fear: the country’s fear-mongering Prime Minister and his intelligence agents; the Palestinian owners of a chip shop and their son; the Bosnian-born mullah terrorist and his Muslim protégés; the Israeli arms smuggler and his wife and daughter; the Romanian doctor and his lover the intelligence agent; a young Jordanian woman and her live-in Muslim boyfriend; a young Iranian arrested by mistake. At first living their lives separate from the others, the the characters converge as in a chess game; in fact the stage is a chess board on which each plays out her or his individual endgame. The irony of the title pervades the play, compelling us to examine more closely the predicaments of immigrants/refugees/the displaced of post 9-11. A extraordinarily illuminating play for our dislocated times.
Robert Luckey, The Twilight Soldiers (novel)
This excellent novel about the Vietnam War exhibits remarkable similarities with the present Iraq War. A war based upon deception, violation of international law, a failed foreign policy, systematic corruption, murder, slaughter of civilians, and wasted resources and lives, the Vietnam and Iraq Wars led to global condemnation.
Major Sam Lewis is stationed in South Vietnam’s Central highlands as one of an advisory team supposed to show the South Vietnamese how to fight a war and build a nation simultaneously. Some of his experiences include witnessing the murder of a village of civilians by some U. S. engineers stoned on heroin and whiskey; kicking a local crime syndicate leader out the door of a helicopter; and killing ten men and being wounded twice in combat.
On being medically evacuated to the States, he is attacked on a college campus by some Vietnam veterans; with his family he attempts to rebuild his damaged body and mind.
Another main character is Sergeant Jim Schift, expert jungle fighter, who marries a Vietnamese woman. Schift saves Lewis from being shot by a GI junkie; verbally assaults a chaplain; and he and another GI and their Vietnamese wives walk into North Vietnam and disappear.
The book powerfully evokes the pointless, failed war. Corruption and its violence flows through every level of government and includes U. S. civilian and military officials. The crime syndicate, for example, as a warning mutilates and then murders a nun who had discovered stolen materials. The hatred of the U. S. by many Vietnamese is similarly widespread; for example, the old “grandmammasan” in charge of local workers at the advisors’ base turns out to be a member of the Vietcong and joins in an attack on the base by the VC. Major Lewis recuperates from his wounds at a hospital and beach, to distance himself for a moment “from killing and murder and friendly fire.”
The depiction of central character Lewis as reflective warrior enables us to experience the war and simultaneously to examine it from inside Lewis’s critical perceptions.
HONORABLE MENTION ($100)
Melanie Hyland, Dove (novel)
A fascinating, stimulating trip back into the hippie, anti-war 1960s, containing the nourishing knowledge of the past. What happened and why in the Vietnam War protest movement? Outspoken Willow and her pacifist boyfriend Paisley, both deeply influenced by Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, evade the draft by traveling to a commune in Canada. On the way they are attacked by some fraternity boys; accept a ride and friendship with an interracial couple, Leaf and 16-year old wife Laura, who are also on the run—from a private detective hired by Laura’s family; visit a hippie commune; and become involved in the protest at Kent State University, where Laura is shot by the National Guard and loses her baby. The refuge of the Toronto commune ends when Paisley’s father dies and they return home; Paisley chooses to join the Army as his father wishes; Willow becomes pregnant; Laura/now Wildflower dies of a heroin overdose; the private detective arrests Leaf; and Paisley goes to Vietnam. The novel then alternates with the two stories of Willow and Leaf, and Paisley’s experiences as a combat soldier: saving a Viet Cong soldier, prisoner of the Viet Cong, escape with the aid of the Cong soldier he had helped, and killed by fellow soldiers as he attempted to return to a U. S. base. Willow says goodbye to Paisley by climbing the Matterhorn Mountain in California, as did characters in The Dharma Bums. An arousing recreation of what it was like to radically protest the Vietnam War that could serve well as the story for a film.
Lauren Ostrow and Anita Simons, Ladies First (play)
Anti-Iraq War protester, Joan, outside the White House, is visited by the spirits of four former first ladies: Mary Todd Lincoln, Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pat Nixon. Together they plan and then kidnap Laura Bush (portrayed by a mannequin) to convince her to persuade the president to end the war. It’s a madcap adventure that fails to succeed in its purpose, but Joan and the four first ladies, each expressing their individualized selves, overcome their initial hostilities and learn and grow to appreciate each other. The fantasy--the unique, original association of present with diverse past first ladies--opens one's mind to new possibilities in the real world.
Lori Ann Stephens, Boarders (animal narrative for young readers)
This lively tale of the efforts of some cats and mice living in the same home to overcome their inherent hostility to the other species and to make peace will be relished by advanced pre-teens and by early teens. When cats move into a home inhabited by mice, ignorance on both sides generates fear and antagonism. Although the father cat and the grandfather mouse seek peaceful coexistence, the younger mice and the kittens try to force the “enemy” to leave the house. An accident that kills a young mouse and a kitten escalates the hostility, but when a mouse saves a kitten from jeopardy, the mice and cats reject their prejudices against the other and choose
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2005
Under Fire by Jan Sherbin, personal accounts by 25 Soviet girls and young women combat fighters during WWII.
Today Is Not a Good Day for War by David Krieger, poems covering events from Hiroshima through the Iraq War.
Escape from Russia by Stanley Opalka, memoir for young people about a Polish family forced to relocate from Poland to Siberia in 1940 and their subsequent struggles.
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2004
Free the Kent 20,000 by Kirk Halliday, memoir of author's experience at Kent State 1970-1973, beginning with the murder of four students by Ohio National guardsmen. Its larger subject is the last years of the idealistic student anti-war and civil rights movement.
The Quiet Bower by Mark Hungerford, a bildungsroman for young readers tracing the adolescent life of Walt from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII and the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
The Whole Stunned World by Jenny Ruth Yasi, a novel of a U. S. family in Burma/Myanmar under the dictatorship.
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2003
The Lamp Beside the Golden Door by Alexander Blackburn. Novel depicting liberation from familial and national prejudices into lives of world service.
Where Such Unmaking Reigns by Kathleen Kern. Novel about Christian human rights witnesses in Palestine.
Anni’s Attic by Anne McGee. Novel for young people from perspectives of two young girls during the Civil War.
Finalists:
War Is Not Healthy for Children and for Other Living Things by Harold Confer, poems for young people.
The Battle of Anghiari by Ann Davidon, play about Leonardo Da Vinci painting The Battle of Anghiari.
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2002
Walking Through the Wall by Kevin Shay (travel narrative, memoir)
The Life of Elise Boulding by Mary Lee Morrison (biography)
Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry in the United States, 1940-2000 by Philip Metres (non-fiction prose, literary criticism)
Finalists:
Transcending Violence by Tod Schneider (treatise, sociology)
The Wedding and Other Poems of War and Resistance by Carolyn Scarr (poetry)
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2001
Dark Century, Bright Prospects by Kent Shiffered (essays)
Hotel Splendid by Lavonne Mueller (play)B
Absolute Flanigan and *The Wisdom Box by Jack Gilroy (novels for young people)B
Finalists:
Bamboo Women by Heather Barbieri (short stories)
Flame Tree by Keith Dahlberg (novel)
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 2000
King of the Armies by Maggie Daughter (play)
The Trouble with Becoming an Aunt by Richie Swanson (novel)
PEACEWRITING AWARDS 1999
While the Light Still Trembles by George Capaccio (book of poems)
On the Causes of War by Michael Andregg (non-fiction prose)
