Hermits Die on Thursday: Stories of Appalachia and the Dark Ages
(forthcoming from Mercer University Press in September 2025)
In this collection of short stories, transgression is the rule, and the profane and the sacred share a bed. Follow hermits and solitary wanderers as they encounter the weird in the Appalachian Mountains and wild spaces of medieval England and Iceland. Prepare for an unsettling procession of entities and objects: a queen turned to fungus, a hermit with a waterfall-sized beard, a goat’s head growing from a cliff, a devilish Pied Piper, a god trapped inside a glacier, a gnome on the moon, bog bodies clinging obstinately to an iron age monument, and an ancient cloud worshipped deep underground, among many others. These tales will transport you to the frontiers of the imagination.
Early Praise
From Appalachia to medieval England, clear across the North Atlantic to Iceland, Gregory Ariail’s Hermits Die on Thursday: Stories of Appalachia and the Dark Ages explores solitude and mysticism. Gleaming brilliantly at its surrealist edges, Ariail’s short story collection stupefies and delights, reimagining the hermit myth, turning it upside down, and making it his own.
Robert Gwaltney (Author of The Cicada Tree and 2023 Georgia Author of the Year)
About Gregory Ariail
I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of West Alabama. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, a master's degree from Oxford University, and an MFA from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. In 2019, I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail.