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Lesley
Bannatyne is an American author who writes
extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and
contemporary celebration. She also writes short stories, many of
which are included in her debut collection Unaccustomed to Grace (2022),
out from Kallisto Gaia Press. Grace has been nominated for The Story Prize and was a finalist for the Independent Author Network's Book of the Year Award. As a manuscript, it won the Harvard University Thesis Humanities Prize
(ALM).
One
of the country's foremost authorities on Halloween, Bannatyne
has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel
("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of
Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National
Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book
Encyclopedia. In 2007, she and several compatriots set the Guinness
World Record for Largest Halloween Gathering, a title they held until 2009.
Lesley has written five books on Halloween, ranging from a children's book,
Witches Night Before Halloween, to Halloween
Nation, which examines the holiday through the eyes of its celebrants.
Nation was nominated for a 2011 Bram Stoker Award. Her other titles are A
Halloween How-To. Costumes, Parties, Destinations, Decorations (2001); A
Halloween Reader. Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past
(2004), and Halloween. An American Holiday, An American History,
celebrated 30 years in print in 2020.
Her
fiction and essays have been published in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian,
Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Pangyrus,
Shooter, Craft, Ocotillo Review, Fish, and Bosque Literary
Magazines. She won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and
received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction, the
2020 Ghoststory.com fiction prize, and was a finalist for many others,
including the Tennessee William Literary Festival Writing Award, the Carve
Prose & Poetry Contest, and the Hudson Prize. As a freelance
journalist, she covered stories ranging from druids in Massachusetts to
relief workers in Bolivia.
Lesley is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wheaton College (MA) and holds an ALM IN Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University Extension Studies. She
lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Books
Articles
Fiction
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