Josh Bell's The Gods in Small Doses Wins the Juniper Prize

Senior Lecturer on Poetry Josh Bell's short story collection, The Gods in Small Doses, won the Juniper Prize. The book will be published through UMass press April 2026. An excerpt from the announcement is included below. 

"In Bell’s stories, childhood is reflected through the funhouse mirror, revealing myth and damage and tenderness and terror. Anything—except what should happen—might happen. A retired witch traps a goat-killing child; a teenage girl obsesses over the regenerative properties of her younger brother’s body; Armageddon erupts between the forces of good (those who go to bed early) and evil (those who stay up late); a supernatural orphan insinuates himself into an all-American family; and the women of a fabulated island all mysteriously disappear overnight. This is a universe of magic and the mundane, where characters attempt to control things—time, death, themselves—that can’t be controlled.  

Bell is the author of two books of poems, No Planets Strike and Alamo Theory, and the novel The Houseboat Veronica." 

You can access the full list of winners here.