Nigerian writer Chukwuebuka Ibeh has been announced runner-up winner of the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction for his short story Miracle.
Ibeh’s entry won ahead of over 400 submissions from all over the world.
Miracle is about a young Nigerian woman grappling with childlessness and a failing marriage, exploring themes of faith, hope, and shared trauma from a recent tragedy.
The annual award is conferred by a catholic literary magazine Dappled Things and presented to any short fiction that has “one foot in this world and one in the next.” The first prize (valued at $500) went to American writer Lance Nixon for ‘Father of Lies’.
For his second-place win, Chukwuebuka will receive a cash award of $250. Both stories, along with selected honourable mentions, will be published in the next issue of Dappled Things.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh last year became the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Miles Morland Scholarship.
On ‘Miracle,’ fiction editor Natalie Morrill said; “Our very close runner-up was “Miracle” by Chukwuebuka Ibeh. One editor remarked that this felt structurally and spiritually reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor, though with a voice and atmosphere all its own. The journey of a desperate wife and would-be mother to a prayer meeting and miracle worker, hoping for the gift of motherhood, forms the backbone of the story, but the miracle she receives is not the one she expects.
“We were absolutely delighted by this story, and we’re thrilled to see such excellent work coming to an American Catholic journal from Nigerian authors like Ibeh.”
Ibeh said, “I was pleasantly surprised to learn I had been shortlisted for the prize. And to be announced runner-up makes me very happy, particularly because the story in question is one very personal to me, and took a lot of courage of sorts to write. To have it recognized in this manner is very validating.”
Dappled Things is a literary magazine dedicated to providing a space for emerging writers to engage the literary world from a Catholic perspective. The magazine is committed to quality writing that takes advantage of the religious, theological, philosophical, artistic, cultural, and literary heritage of the Catholic Church to inform and enrich contemporary literary culture.
