PIQUA — In conjunction with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize (DLPP), Edison State Community College’s English Department is hosting Peace Week at the Piqua Campus. The week will culminate with a visit from the 2016 DLPP nonfiction award winner, Susan Southard on Thursday, Nov. 17, in the Robinson Theater at noon.

During her visit, Southard will discuss her prizewinning novel, “Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War,” which chronicles the story of five survivors of the Nagasaki bombing.

A gripping novel that explores the need for peace to the fullest extent, “Nagasaki” also garnered the 2016 Lukas Book Prize, sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Southard’s work also has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and Lapham’s Quarterly.

Southard holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and was a nonfiction fellow at the Norman Mailer Center in Provincetown, Mass. Outside of writing, Southard directs creative writing programs, has taught nonfiction seminars, and is the founder and artistic director of Essential Theatre based in Phoenix, Ariz.

The Edison event precedes the Dayton Literary Peace Prize awards ceremony, which will be held on Sunday, Nov. 20, at the Benjamin J. Schuster Center in Dayton. Inspired by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia, the DLPP is the only international literary peace prize awarded in the United States. The prize celebrates the power of literature to promote peace, social justice, and global understanding.

Before Southard’s visit to campus, a series of peace-focused events will occur throughout the week in celebration of peace. A “peace walk” will be on display near the Myers Vacarro Art Gallery and feature a graffiti wall, selfie station, and a series of quotations about peace.

For more information, contact William Loudermilk at [email protected].