SHORT BIO:

Lesley Bannatyne is the 2024 recipient of the GRACE PALEY AWARD for short fiction for LAKE SONG (Mad Creek Books, 2025). Her debut collection of short stories, Unaccustomed to Grace, was published by Kallisto Gaia Press in 2022. Lesley's fiction and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Shooter, Craft, and many other literary magazines. She won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books literary award for fiction and her work has been nominated for the Story Prize, Pushcart, and Best of the Net. 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.

LONGER BIO

Lesley’s 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 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 also  writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. Her books range 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. 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, which celebrated 30 years in print in 2020.

Lesley has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel (The Haunted History of Halloween, The Real Story of Halloween), with magazines such as Time, Slate, and National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. She has given talks at Harvard University, the Gonson Lecture Series (Cambridge, MA), Forest Hills Cemetery, the St. Louis Museum of Art, the National Arts Club (NY), Morbid Anatomy Museum (Brooklyn), Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and many libraries, bookstores, and conventions, as well as in media such as Woman’s Day, CBS News, Good Morning America, and PBS. She holds the Guinness World Record for a Halloween gathering in 2007 and kept the title until 2009. Lesley was a master of ceremonies for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Harvard Yard (2007) and helped kick off the Greenwich Village Halloween parade in 2008.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wheaton College (MA), Lesley holds an ALM IN Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University Extension Studies. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Click here for c.v.

LESLEY BANNATYNE

Books
Lake Song. A Novel in Stories. Grace Paley Prize Winner 2024, Mad Creek Books, OSU Press, 2025
Unaccustomed to Grace. Stories, Kallisto Gaia Press, March 2022. Story Prize nominee, 2022;
Independent Author Network Best Book of the Year finalist, 2022; Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize long list, 2021, Hudson Prize shortlist, 2020; Harvard University ALM Humanities Thesis Prize, 2020
Halloween Nation. Behind the Scenes of America’s Fright Night (creative non-fiction), Pelican Publishing, 2011; ebook 2012. Bram Stoker Award finalist, 2012. Second edition, 2020
Witches Night before Halloween (children’s), Pelican Publishing, 2007; ebook 2012
A Halloween Reader. Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past (edited anthology), Pelican Publishing, 2004; 2nd printing 2007; ebook 2012
A Halloween How-To: Costumes, Parties, Decorations and Destinations, Pelican Publishing, 2001; 3rd printing 2003; ebook 2012
Halloween: An American Holiday, An American History, Facts On File, 1990/Pelican Publishing, 1998; 4th printing 2017, ebook 2012
Harvard’s Paine Hall. Musical Canon and the New England Barn, 2010, with Reinhold Brinkmann

Short Stories (selected)
“Echolocation,” finalist for New Letters Robert Day Award for Fiction, 2024
“Mad Lil,” Pangyrus, 2024
“When the Bough Breaks” MAYDAY Literary Magazine, August 2023
“The Boy in the Boat,” Carve Prose & Poetry Contest finalist, 2020; New Millennium Writing Award finalist, 2022
“Ugly,” Pushcart Prize nominee, 2022; Editor’s Choice, Ocotillo Review
“OMG Winn Handler Moved Next Door,” Sequestrum, January 2024; 2021 Tennessee
Williams Literary Festival Writing Award, 3rd place
“Like the Light in Winter,” Tulip Tree Press, Stories That Need to Be Told Anthology, 2020
“Corpse Walks into a Bar,” Tucson Festival of Books First Place Literary Award for Fiction, 2019
“The Study and Practice of Astral Projection,” Craft Literary, 1.31.20
“Gravity,” Bosque Literary Journal Fiction Prize, 2018, pub. vol. 9
“On Tuesday I Will Kill Him,” Shooter Literary Magazine (UK), Winter 2015; Sequestrum
      Editor’s Reprint Award finalist, 2018
“Blackbird,” The Cantabrigian Magazine, Spring 2018
“Little Stranger,” Zone 3, Fall 2017

Journalism & Essays (selected)
“The Halloween We Know,” in An Elephant’s Idea. A Basic Companion for Writers, 2nd edition, Mika Shipley, Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2018
“When Halloween Was All Tricks,” Smithsonian.com, 2017
“Monster Love,” Pangyrus Magazine, 2016
“Death and Plenty,” Chicago Literati, 2015
“The H Word,” Nightmare Magazine, 2014
“Halloween,” The Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience, Greenwood Publishing, 2009
“Neighbors Lose the Chain link, Connect the Community,” Boston Globe, 2008
“Florence. The Ultimate Art History Field Trip,” AAA Magazine, 2008
“College Bound,” Christian Science Monitor: Two Part Series, 2007
“Ancient Signatures Found at Sistine Chapel Choir Loft,” Renaissance Magazine, 2006
“Secrets of the Maya ... Unlocked!” USA Today, 2005
“The Dirt on Baseball, Christian Science Monitor, 2005
“Put on Your Kilt and Pass the Haggis,” Boston Globe, 2005
“For Buddhists Here, A Gentle Rite of Spring,” Boston Globe, 2005

Appearances and Interviews

Television
Tile Films (Ireland), Halloween 2025
Good Morning America, digital version 2021
NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt 2021
WGBH Curiosity Desk w/Edgar Herrick, Why do we carve pumpkins? 2021
Shock Docs: This is Halloween, Travel Channel 2020
The Real Story of Halloween, History Channel, 2010
The Haunted History of Halloween, History Channel, 1997

Radio/Podcasts
Illinois Public Radio, 2024
Chris Kimball's Milk Street Radio, 2022
The Why, Newsy, 2022
Why Halloween Matters, CNN, 2020
WCCO-TV CBS, Minneapolis, 2020
I've Got Questions w/Mike Simpson 2022
Getting Schooled w/ Abby Hornacek 2021
Our American Stories, iheartradio, 2021
Jay Talking, WBZ Boston, 2019
Brian Lehrer show, WNYC 2019
Talk Radio, Howard Hughes Show, BBC, 2018
Caravan to Midnight w/ John B Wells 2017
WGBH Radio: Haunting the Lynn Public Library, 2015
Iowa Public Radio: The Power of Costuming, 2015
WBGH The Callie Crossley Show: “Halloween’s Haunted History”

Print/web
Milaukee Journal Sentinel, Full Moon on Halloween 10.26.20
New York Times, 2019, Pop Culture Costumes
History.com, 2019 Costume Trends
atlas obscura, 2019, Scottish Singles Used to Spend Halloween Picking Kale
Readers Digest, 2019, Costumes
Time Magazine: Why We Carve Jack-o-lanterns
The Atlantic: Trick or Treating Isn't What It Used To Be
Wall Street Journal: How the Grinch Stole Halloween
Harvard Gazette: After Five Books on Halloween, Harvard’s Lesley Bannatyne is a go-to source
Slate Magazine: When did Halloween gets so tawdry?

Education

BA, English, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude
MA, Creative Writing and Literature, Harvard University Extension Studies, Dean’s
Distinction Thesis Award

Books
Articles
Fiction