The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has announced its 2026 honorees. Ann Patchett will receive the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Patchett is the author of ten novels, including “Whistler” and “The Dutch House,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Biden and owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kaveh Akbar won the fiction prize for “Martyr!” and Priscilla Morris is the fiction runner-up for “Black Butterflies,” a debut novel inspired by the Siege of Sarajevo. In nonfiction, Sunil Amrith won for “The Burning Earth: A History.” Amrith is a professor at Yale University and a MacArthur fellowship recipient. Lauren Markham is the nonfiction runner-up for “A Map of Future Ruins.”

Additional fiction finalists are Gish Jen for “Bad Bad Girl,” Roohi Choudhry for “Outside Women,” Karen Russell for “The Antidote,” Sam Wachman for “The Sunflower Boys,” Betty Shamieh for “Too Soon” and Charlotte McConaghy for “Wild Dark Shore.”

Nonfiction finalists are Danielle Leavitt for “By the Second Spring,” Amanda Knox for “Free,” Kevin Sack for “Mother Emanuel,” Eve L. Ewing for “Original Sins,” Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull for “The Jailhouse Lawyer” and Jack Fairweather for “The Prosecutor.”