The J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, conferred by Dappled Things, takes its measure from the Catholic novelist and short-story writer whose priests were less mystics than men entangled in the mundane. The prize seeks narratives that honor that inheritance: stories in which the spiritual and the worldly press against each other, often to comic or humiliating effect, and where grace arrives not as spectacle but as an uninvited guest in ordinary rooms. The journal's editorial sensibility is literary and sacramental, attentive to craft, character, and the quiet drama of belief under pressure. The award is administered without a reading fee, and only one submission per author is accepted. The first-place winner receives $700; the second-place winner receives $300. Up to eight honorable mentions are awarded publication in the journal and a one-year subscription. Winners are announced in Spring 2026, with winning and honorable-mention stories published throughout the subsequent issues of that year. The prize thus offers both material recognition and a sustained editorial platform for fiction that might otherwise struggle to find a home in a secular literary landscape. What the jury appears to value is not pious resolution but the friction of faith lived in a fallen, everyday world. Stories should be carefully crafted, with vivid characters whose encounters with grace are as likely to embarrass as to console. The curatorial vision is ecumenical in spirit but specific in taste: work that takes seriously the awkwardness of having one foot in another world, and that finds in that awkwardness a source of mordant, humane entertainment.