A writer and scholar with local roots and education is a co-winner of a major $100,000 scholarly prize for the book she co-authored about civil resistance.

The writer/scholar is Erica Chenoweth, who grew up in Dayton and who received a B.A. in political science and German from the University of Dayton in 2002. She also holds an M.A. and a doctorate in political science from the University of Colorado and is an assistant professor in international studies at the University of Denver.

Her book, co-authored with Maria Stephan — a lead foreign affairs officer with the U.S. State Department — is “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict” (Columbia University Press, 2011). According to a release about the prize, the co-authors “collected and analyzed data on all known uprising between 1900 and 2005 involving more than 1,000 people that related to a country’s secession, overthrow of a dictatorship or removal of a foreign occupation.” They found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as violent ones.

Their shared prize is the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

According to the Grawemeyer Awards website (grawemeyer.org), H. Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist, entrepreneur, astute investor and philanthropist, created the lucrative Grawemeyer Awards at the University of Louisville in 1984, with an initial endowment to fund the awards, which draw nominations from around the world. In addition to Ideas Improving World Order, Grawemeyer Awards are given in education, music composition, psychology and religion.

“The implications of their work are enormous,” said award director Charles Ziegler. “Not only do their findings validate the work done by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., but they shed new light on the political change we’re seeing today, such as the Arab Spring process in Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations.”

The book also won the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for best book published in the United States on government, politics or international affairs.

Nature poetry readings

Southwest Ohio poets will gather for “In the Spirit of the Glen” to share a night of nature-inspired poetry from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Vernet Ecological Building (formerly the Glen Helen Building), 405 Corry St., Yellow Springs. Poets include Deborah Colon, Ed Davis, Catherin Essinger, David Lee Garrison, Julie Moore, Bomani Moyenda and others. The event, co-sponsored by Glen Helen Ecology Institute and Tecumseh Land Trust, is free and open to the public. Following the reading, wine and cheese will be served and attendees may share their poems in an open mic.

Local playwright stays busy

Stacey Lane (www.StaceyLaneInk.com), a Miamisburg resident and playwright, has written numerous plays that have been produced at more than 300 theaters across the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand and published with Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts Inc., and numerous other play publishers.

In June 2010, the Human Race Summer Stock Kids produced the world premiere of Stacey Lane’s play “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” with a humorous twist in which the overwhelmed elderly woman’s children are familiar children’s literature favorites, such as Jack, Jill, Little Red Riding Hood and more. Usually, Lane says, Summer Stock Kids performs previously published scripts with extensive production histories, but with the support of Human Race Education Director Marilyn Klaben, Summer Stock Kids Director Jene Rebbin Shaw asked Lane to write a new play specific to the needs of the summer camp program.

Dramatic Publishing (www.dramaticpublishing.com), the leading publisher of children’s theater scripts, has just published this play under the new title “Story Stew: A Fairy Tale Revue.” The entire original cast’s names appear in the front of the book and the cover features a photograph from the show that includes most of the children. Area children starring in the original production include Bridget Elder, Kylie Johnson, Will Sommer, Grace Lile, Kelton Oaks, Gracie Jimison, Kati Meyer, Teryn Barker, Sara Pierce, Brenna Campbell, Allison Kordik, Chloe Johnson, Maia Suchland, Christy Carson, Kennedy Chase, Katrina Fry, Sara Pierce, Claudia VanZandt, Sophie Arcusa and Rayya Uqdah.

Lane is a recipient of the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District’s Literary Artist Fellowship and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Grant. She also produces SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day Dayton.