Last year, Dappled Things debuted the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. It was a tremendous success, drawing about 400 entries from which a winner and nine honorable mentions were selected by a panel of independent judges. (If you have not yet read the winning story, Where Moth and Rust by Kristin Luehr, you should.)
Jacques Maritain
Building on last year’s success, we are holding the fiction prize again and introducing a nonfiction equivalent, the Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction. Maritain was an influential 20th century Thomist philosopher and Catholic convert whose work covered a wide range of topics, including metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and politics, and—significantly for us—literature and art. His book Art and Scholasticism has been a major influence in Dappled Things‘ own approach to aesthetics. This year the prize will be judged by James Matthew Wilson, who is author of The Violent and the Fallen, Some Permanent Things, and The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry, among other books, as well as a literature professor at Villanova University. Here’s what you need to know if you are interested in making a submission to either prize:
What are the prize amounts?
For the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, the prizes are as follows:
1st place: $500
2nd place: $250
8 honorable mentions: publication in the journal and a one-year subscription.
For the Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction, the prizes are:
1st place: $500
2nd place: $300
3rd place: $200
What is the deadline for the fiction prize?
You can submit your story until November 28, 2014.
What is the deadline for the nonfiction prize?
Since all nonfiction submissions will be eligible for the prize (the winner will be selected from among all the essays published in Dappled Things during a given year), then submissions for the prize are accepted year-round. To participate in the current prize, your piece should appear at the latest in the Mary, Queen of Angels 2015 edition, which means you would have to make a submission by June 2015. The issues could all be filled before then, however, so don’t delay. We publish about two to three essays per issue, and all published essays will be finalists for the prize. The earlier you submit, the likelier the chances your essay will appear among a given year’s finalists.
What kind of submissions are you looking for?
For the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, please review the submission guidelines by clicking here. If you have a story to submit that doesn’t fit those guidelines, please consider making a submission under the general fiction category.
With regards to the Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction, we are not limiting submissions to a particular theme (this being in keeping with Maritain’s own broad interests), other than what would fit within the context of a Catholic cultural and literary journal. In other words, please follow our nonfiction submission guidelines and look at the nonfiction pieces that appear in our previous issues. Book reviews and interviews are not eligible for the prize, but all other forms of nonfiction are.
When will winners be announced?
Winners of the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction will be announced in February 2015. Winners of the Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction will be announced in December 2015 (with the finalists being announced as each issue is published, starting with the Christmas 2014 edition).
Is there a reading fee?
No. However, given the costs imposed on us by the huge number of entries last year, we are instituting a nominal $2 processing fee for the fiction prize to help us run it as efficiently as possible. Think of it as the equivalent of paying for postage if submissions were being accepted through the mail . There will be no processing fee for the nonfiction prize this year.
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Make your submissions soon! Further information will be posted on the Contests page as well as Submittable. We look forward to reading your entries during the coming year.
