These Dreaming Hills

Dark and Wondrous Tales from Appalachia

Edited by Noah Ashley Blooms

October 13, 2026

ABOUT THE BOOK

These Dreaming Hills: Dark and Wondrous Tales from Appalachia is an anthology of twelve speculative fiction stories that explores Appalachia through horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, magical realism, and the uncanny.

Bringing together both new and previously published work, the collection moves through Appalachian landscapes and communities that resist easy definition. Its writers imagine strange transformations, impossible geographies, inherited powers, ecological upheaval, and encounters with forces both ancient and new. Throughout, the familiar and fantastic intertwine, revealing a region shaped by memory, change, and contradiction.

Edited by acclaimed Appalachian author Noah Ashley Blooms, These Dreaming Hills includes an introduction that considers speculative fiction as a way of seeing Appalachia beyond the stereotypes that have long defined it from the outside. Across the collection, the stories explore inheritance, memory, belonging, environmental stewardship, identity, and the complicated relationship between people and place.

For readers of literary speculative fiction, folk horror, dark fantasy, weird fiction, and regional literature, These Dreaming Hills celebrates the breadth and vitality of contemporary Appalachian storytelling.