APNewsBreak: Native American author honored with peace prize

CINCINNATI (AP) — A Native American author whose writings have highlighted his culture and its traditions is this year’s winner of a lifetime achievement award celebrating literature’s power to foster peace and understanding.

Dayton Literary Peace Prize officials told The Associated Press they selected novelist, poet and essayist N. Scott Momaday for the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. It’s named for the late diplomat who brokered the 1995 Bosnia peace accords in Ohio.

A Kiowa (KEYE’-oh-wuh) Indian, Momaday earned the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with “House Made of Dawn.” It’s about a young man returning to his Kiowa pueblo from the U.S. Army. The book has been credited with leading a renaissance in Native American literature .

Past winners of the Dayton award include Studs Terkel, John Irving and Elie Wiesel.

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