This paper is concerned with the asymptotic stability analysis of a one dimensional wave equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions subject to a nonlinear distributed damping with an L p functional framework, p ∈ [2, ∞]. Some well-posedness results are provided together with exponential decay to zero of trajectories, with an estimation of the decay rate. The well-posedness results are proved by considering an appropriate functional of the energy in the desired functional spaces introduced by Haraux in [11]. Asymptotic behavior analysis is based on an attractivity result on a trajectory of an infinite-dimensional linear time-varying system with a special structure, which relies on the introduction of a suitable Lyapunov functional. Note that some of the results of this paper apply for a large class of nonmonotone dampings.