Author, Supernatural Fiction Award Winner, And “Foremost Authority On Halloween”

Behind the scenes here at The Ghost Story—well, actually . . . working from her home in Massachusetts—Lesley Bannatyne is busy reading submissions to the fall 2021 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition in preparation for selecting a winner and two honorable mentions—all of whom, of course, will be announced on Halloween.

The autumn competition couldn’t have a finer or more appropriate judge: not only is Bannatyne a previous Supernatural Fiction Award winner for her summer 2020 piece, “Corpse Walks Into A Bar,” but her nonfiction books on Halloween have earned her the unofficial title of “world’s foremost authority” on the holiday.

Her Halloween titles include Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America’s Fright Night (Pelican Publishing), which was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award. She edited an anthology of folklore-based literature, A Halloween Reader (also published by Pelican).

In addition, her short fiction and essays have been published in Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, and The Christian Science Monitor, as well as in the literary magazines Pangyrus, Cantibrigian, Zone 3 and Shooter (UK). Her short story “Gravity” won the 2018 Bosque Fiction Prize; she received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction, and was a finalist for  the Tennessee Williams 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’s first collection of short stories, Unaccustomed to Grace, will be launched in March, 2022, from Kallisto Gaia Press.

To learn more about Lesley and her work, visit her website.