Toronto writer and anthropologist Jo Roberts is among 12 finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an international award for fiction and non-fiction books that promote intercultural understanding. A winner in each category will be awarded $10,000 at a gala in Dayton, Ohio on Nov. 9.

Roberts’ Contested Land, Contested Memory: Israel’s Jews and Arabs and the Ghosts of Catastrophe, published by Dundurn Press, describes the fraught histories of the Jewish and Arab people of Israel, and how each group’s memories of the ongoing conflict has shape their present relations. The book was also a finalist for the 2013 National Jewish Book Award.

Among the other non-fiction finalists are Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Finkel and Jesmyn Ward, whose 2011 novel Salvage the Bones won a National Book Award.