Lesley Bannatyne is the 2024 recipient of the GRACE PALEY AWARD for short fiction. Her new book, LAKE SONG, is forthcoming from Mad Creek Books, an imprint of OSU Press. Her debut collection of short stories, Unaccustomed to Grace, was published by Kallisto Gaia Press (Austin, TX) in March, 2022. Lesley's fiction and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Shooter, Craft, Ocotillo Review, Fish, MAYDAY, 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 others including the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Writing Award, the Carve Prose and Poetry contest, the Acacia Fiction Prize, and the Hudson Prize. As a freelance journalist, she has covered topics ranging from druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia. She holds an ALM in Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University Extension Studies. Other SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS you might enjoy

 

	Short Stories READ “Corpse Walks Into a Bar,” Winner, The Ghost Story, 2020; Tucson Festival of Books First Place Literary Award for Fiction; short listed for both the Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize (2017, under the title "Weight of a Soul") and the Masters Review Anthology Prize. Illustration by Andy Paciorek
	"Gravity" Bosque Literary Journal 2018 Fiction Prize
	"On Tuesday I Will Kill Him," Shooter Literary Magazine (UK, 2015); finalist, 2018 Sequestrum Editor's Reprint Award
	"Little Stranger," Zone 3 Literary Magazine
	READ "The Study and Practice of Astral Projection," Craft Literary, January 2020
s	READ "When the Bough Breaks," MAYDAY Literary Magazine, August 2023. Illustration by Danzhu Hu, "What a Beautiful World"
	READ "Mad Lil," Pangyrus Magazine, January 2024
	READ "OMG Winn Handler Moved Next Door," Sequestrum Editors Reprint, January 2024