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

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

A Kiowa Indian, Momaday earned the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction with “House Made of Dawn,” about a young man returning to his Kiowa pueblo after serving in the U.S. Army. His 1968 book has been credited with leading a renaissance in Native American literature.

Born in 1934, Momaday grew up on reservations in the southwestern United States, where his parents were teachers.

The award carries a $10,000 prize. Previous winners include Studs Terkel, Taylor Branch, John Irving, Gloria Steinem, and Elie Wiesel.