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Author Laura Venita Green, whose genre-bending novel Sister Creatures dropped on October 7, recommends Hellions in “10 Books Featuring Devils, Doppelgangers, Ghosts, and Creepy Dolls” on Electric Literature:

Monsters, beasts, creepy dolls, a mystic manuscript, a Swamp Ape, a Wild Professor, and Pazuzu, the demon from The Exorcist. The eleven stories in this collection have it all. Through the use of myriad fantastical elements, Elliott explores the clashing worlds of children and adults, and how one can never fully understand the other. . . . Rendered in hyper-specific prose, Hellions evokes an underlying tension and uncertainty that feels very true to the human experience. I recommend this book to everyone.

Mother Horror, aka Sadie Hartmann, recently released Feral and Hysterical: Mother Horror’s Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women, essential reading for feminists and horror fans. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see Hellions featured in “Dark and Disturbing Fiction for 2025: Horror Gems that Have Set the Course for the Rest of the Year” (The Lineup). Hartmann calls it “a short story collection that lingers—strange, piercing, and deeply unsettling in a way that feels both mythic and personal. . . . There’s a wild, Southern Gothic atmosphere threaded throughout, paired with prose that’s lush and seductive. Julia Elliott understands how to use strangeness with purpose.”

Jonathan Haupt’s review for The Post and Courier nails key themes in Hellions. In “Julia Elliott Pens Collection of Weirdly Wonderful Speculative Short Stories,” Haupt proclaims, “With nods to medieval history, folklore, horror, science fiction and Southern gothic coming-of-age narratives, Elliott traverses an uncanny and generally rural landscape where outsider heroes (or anti-heroes) escape normalcy by embracing the sublime or surreal otherworldliness inherent to who they were always meant to be.”

Oh how I love Amanda Trout’s New Letters review. In “Hellions by Julia Elliott,” Trout states, “In what reads as a spiritual successor to her debut collection The Wilds, Pushcart Prize-winning author Julia Elliott has once again proven her mastery of the sinister folkloric short story with Hellions. This set of eleven tales enchants its readers with legends of monstrous alligators, flying cabins, bewitched children, and more, all in Elliott’s signature Southern Gothic-meets-fairy-tale style. Match this expansive world with the exquisite poise of Elliott’s writing—the whimsical diction, the attention to detail, the bold blend of archaic chant with modern slang—and you have the makings of a masterpiece.”

Thanks, University of South Carolina, for showing Hellions (and my passion for horror) some love lately. I had a fascinating conversation with Valerie Weingart from the South Carolina Honors College for “The Horror!” as well as an insightful chat with Kristine Hartvigson for “USC Professor Holds Horror Fans Spellbound.”

Southern Review of Books chose Hellions as a July Southern Summer Book Club pick! Here’s a video of the delightful conversation I had with Bradley Sides and other book world voices. Sides also asked me some fantastic questions for “‘Stagnant and Delirious’: An Interview with Julia Elliott.”

I loved making a Hellions playlist for Largehearted Boy, so I’m extra stoked to see my collection on Largehearted Ledger‘s “Best Books of 2025 So Far.” According to Gutowski, “the stories in Julia Elliott‘s collection Hellions are marvelously diverse and divine magic from everyday lives.”

I’m thrilled with this review of Hellions (Tin House) from Chattanooga Free Times Press: “Julia Elliott’s ‘Hellions’ Stories Teem with Natural and Supernatural Creatures.” Erica Wright says, “In her new story collection Hellions, Julia Elliott embraces the grotesque, playing with a rich literary tradition and molding it into something wholly her own. These tales teem with supernatural creatures — demons, hags, changelings, and swamp apes — but it’s the humans who are most compelling.”

In a magical review from Cleaver, Hana S. Elysia writes, “Elliott has compelled me to expand my earthly boundaries, because, at its core, that’s what Hellions is about: reaching for more. Reaching beyond. Grasping for magic you thought you lost after childhood, prying apart your chest to see a heart pulsing with swamp water. Any fan of surrealism, fantasy, or body horror will find a home in these pages. So tear them open and slide in, smear your face with mud, and rise toward the moon to meet the wondrous and wild.”

Las Vegas Weekly asked the staff at Writer’s Block Book Shop for favorite summer reads, and Program Director Meagan Smith kindly recommended Hellions, calling it “the best short story collection I’ve read in a while. Elliott experiments with different types of horror in every story, from the fantastic to the domestic. Anyone who has spent a summer in a rural Southern town can recognize the collection’s harsh shadows, overbearing sun, and buzzing air.”