Dappled Things honors the best essays published in the journal in a year through 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 on Dappled Things' own approach to aesthetics. 

Here’s what you need to know if you are interested in making a submission:

Prize Amounts

1st place: $500

2nd place: $300

3rd place: $200

Is there a theme?

In keeping with Maritain's own broad interests, we are not limiting submissions to a particular theme, 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.

Submission Deadline

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 2022 edition, which means you would have to make a submission by the end of August 2022. 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.

Past Winners

2020 Winners

First Place: “A Fast That Is Pleasing to the Eyes:” In Search of the End of Art, Part II, Brian Prugh
Second Place: Burning My Education: Rediscovering the Basics of Story, Andrew Graff
Third Place: The Lyrical Liturgy: How Romanticism Recovered the Christian Aesthetic, Michael De Sapio

2019 Winners

First Place: The Weight of Memory, Krystal Song
Second Place: Tradition and the Baptism of Horror, Chase Padusniak
Third Place: A Moving Experience, Liz Charlotte Grant

2018 Winners

First Place: The Morality of Aesthetic: Rethinking the Writer’s Obligations to Art and Reader, Andrew Graff
Second Place: A Fire-Stained Cathedral Gargoyle: Leon Bloy and the Catholic Literary Tradition, Joshua Hren
Third Place: Durer’s Hare, David Mohan

2017 Winners

First Place: Torturing Jews and Weeping Over Schubert: Have the Humanities Failed to Humanize Us?, Mark Watney
Second Place: The Waves, Elizabeth Oh
Third Place: Fear of Eternity, Ivy Grimes

2016 Winners

First Place: Why You’re Wrong About Medieval Art, Daniel Mitsui
Second Place: Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism and the Recovery of a Beautiful World, James Matthew Wilson
Third Place: Catholic Novelist, Confused Apologist: William Giraldi and the Nature of Religious Fiction, Michael St. Thomas

2015 Winners

First Place: How to Think Like a Poet, Ryan Wilson
Second Place: The Largest Stone, Silvia Foti
Third Place: Communion, Christine Armstrong