Our 2022 J. F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction Winners!

Written By Ann Thomas

Dappled Things is very pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction.  We look forward to sharing the work of these outstanding writers in our pages and online in the days to come.

First Place: "Terms of Bereavement" by Melissa Boberg

Subtle, refined, keenly perceptive, and full of tangible sorrow, this story of women navigating the fragments of their social and religious worlds after the collapse of two marriages evokes the tragedy inherent in the truth that we hold our souls’ treasures “in vessels of clay.”


Runner Up: "Her Story" by Nathan Alling Long

This sly literary comedy functions as a parable on the attempt to create little self-sufficient heavens with our art, the necessary limits of aesthetic aspiration in human life, and the elusive nature of perfection.

Honorable Mention: "Jerking Forward" by Violet Piper 

Dystopian yet somehow simultaneously gentle, this gripping tale reminds us of the speculative fictions of Ted Chiang or Emily St. John Mandel, as it probes the indispensability of human belief in eternal life and the distortions that can arise from placing transcendent faith in fallible matter.


Congratulations to our winners, and our sincere gratitude to all who shared their work with us!

Ann Thomas

Ann Thomas lives in Iowa City, Iowa with her husband and five children. Her poetry and narrative nonfiction have appeared in Plough, Image, and St. Austin Review. She serves as managing editor of Dappled Things.

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