"This is a special honor. A writer is always thrilled to have her work recognized. But this prize has a particular meaning to me, because I covered the fighting in the Balkans as a journalist and I know what peace, even an imperfect peace, can mean to a civilian population that has been beseiged and violated by years of war. In these times, particularly, it is good to be reminded of what was achieved at Dayton. Negotiators and diplomats are rarely lionized as military heros are, and that's a great pity. As Dayton shows, it is at the table, rather than on the battle field, that wars may be brought to an end."

                                    - Geraldine Brooks, 2010

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.

In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master's program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.

Brooks married author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup, France, in 1984. They have two sons-- Nathaniel and Bizuayehu--and two dogs. They divide their time between homes in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.

�We have to remember that what brings us together is the most important thing. We can�t let the voices that want to demonize the other be strong. We have to be the ones in our generation who stand up against it. Wherever it is, whether it�s in Southern-Sudan or Lower-Manhattan. Is literature a vaccine for this terrible disease that we have as a species? I like to think it is. I like to think it is because the people who are the enemies of peace are afraid of it. We have to find our common identity because the human heart remains the human heart no matter how our material circumstances or our race or our clothes or our gender are defined by others.�

                                    - Geraldine Brooks, 2010