Winners of the 2022 Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction!
Dappled Things is pleased to announce the winners of our 2022 Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction, named for the 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. Each year, the three best nonfiction essays appearing in the pages of Dappled Things are awarded this special recognition. All three essays this year speak to the burning and thirsting we experience for God’s grace and mercy in our corporeality.
Especially powerful is first place winner To Consume with Fire by Sarah Malone from the Easter 2022 issue, exploring the mystery of seraphic nature, and our own embodiedness:
They should be alarming at least, terrifying, really. But I’m so drawn to them, to the bliss they must feel by not having a corporeal body, or the bliss of having and knowing and serving a purpose. Even their name, from the Greek saraph, meaning “to consume with fire,” is alluring. Haven’t you ever wished to burn, to be ignited for something, for someone?
Read the essay in its entirety here.
Second Place: The Tree that Grows Forever by Bonnie Lander Johnson in Mary Queen of Angels 2022
Broken humanity can follow Christ to new life, but only at a price. If even Christ, in his innocence, underwent great suffering, then there is little doubt that we too must suffer in order to blossom and bear fruit like the green tree. Houselander’s novel [The Dry Wood] is, among other things, a meditation on the challenges—but also the possibility—of living out the Christian faith in a personal and social environment that is dry or thirsty for grace.
Third Place: Mirror Image by Liz Charlotte Grant in Easter 2022
The memory of family is deeper than events or conversations or time shared at the same kitchen table. The memory resides in our flesh, our bodies alive with each other, even past the death of relationship. The memory breathes. My mother breathes my breaths alongside me. And after she’s gone, she will still live within my bones, a poltergeist as close as my shadow, despised and more, deeply loved.
Congratulations to our winners, and thank you for your essays and their power both to stretch us outside ourselves and draw us more deeply inward at the same time, all to encounter Christ more fully.
We encourage you to revisit these three remarkable essays or encounter them for the first time if you’ve not read them, and learn more about our annual Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction. Have an essay you’d like considered? We’d love to read it.
