These Dreaming Hills
Dark and Wondrous Tales from Appalachia
Edited by Noah Ashley Blooms
Paperback - 206 pages
Publishes October 13, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9969124-0-7
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.
“Like the worlds within its covers, These Dreaming Hills, the new anthology edited by Noah Ashley Blooms, is bound by neither the laws of physics nor the false dividers of genre. These are tales turned loose—minds controlling rivers, oceans cropping up in the middle of the Blue Ridge mountains, data centers blotting out the sun and thundering into our dreams. This is boffo writing, twelve contributors and every one a jewel. Buy it. Read it. Spread the news. A new classic has arrived.”
Book Details
INSIDE THE ANTHOLOGY
Alisa Alering
Nathan Ballingrud
Lesly-Marie Buer
Rachel Dockal
Marina Favila
Amanda Gaines
206 pages
Trade Paperback
ABOUT THE EDITOR
October 13, 2026
Publication Date
Elizabeth Kilcoyne
Jesse Koehler
C. Christopher Mullins
Christopher Rowe
Kelly Ward
Rod A. White
Noah Ashley Blooms (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary, Appalachian author of Where I Can’t Follow and Every Bone a Prayer. Their work has been nominated for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, Weatherford Award, and Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and they’ve been named a South Arts State Literary Fellow for Kentucky. Their writing has appeared in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, The Oxford American, Reactor, and elsewhere. They received their MFA as a John and Renee Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi and are a graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop.
6 × 9 inches
Trim Size
ISBN: 979-8-9969124-0-7