The J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, conferred by the journal Dappled Things, takes its measure from a writer whose priests were neither mystics nor moralists but men caught mid-stumble between the temporal and the eternal. The prize asks for stories in that lineage: carefully made narratives with vivid characters who meet grace in ordinary rooms, and who are, as Powers put it, "one foot in this world and one in the next." The journal's concern is not devotional tidiness but the humiliating, mordantly funny, and occasionally luminous business of trying to live a faith in the age we actually inhabit. The award is administered without a reading fee, and only one submission per author is accepted. The first-place writer receives $700; second place receives $300. Up to eight honorable mentions are recognized with publication in Dappled Things and a one-year subscription. Winners will be announced in Spring 2026 and published throughout the journal's subsequent issues that year. The curatorial vision is literary rather than sectarian. Dappled Things seeks work that earns its metaphysics through craft—stories in which the transcendent arrives uninvited, often inconveniently, and is registered in the texture of daily life rather than announced. The prize is open to writers of any background whose fiction can hold both registers at once: the world as it is and the world pressing in from beyond it.