
She won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction, the 2020 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. 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. An American Holiday, An American History, celebrated 30 years in print in 2020. Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past (2004), and Halloween. Costumes, Parties, Destinations, Decorations (2001) A Halloween Reader. The book was nominated for a 2011 Bram Stoker Award. 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. In 2007, she and several compatriots set the Guinness World Record for Largest Halloween Gathering, a title they held until 2009. 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. She also writes short stories, many of which are included in her debut collection _Unaccustomed to Grace_, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in March, 2022. Lesley Bannatyne is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. I look forward to reading more from Lesley Bannatyne. Horror fans would also enjoy this collection of stories. If you enjoy genuinely bizarre paranormal short stories with a dash of humor, you’ll want to read Unaccustomed to Grace. from The Twilight Zone would find Unaccustomed to Grace fascinating and so would his fans.

I connected with the characters and thoroughly enjoyed reading the stories. Lesley Bannatyne is a very talented writer with a firm grasp of dark humor, paranormal, short stories. Its tongue-in-cheek humor is perfect for those who enjoy reading about zombies. My favorite story is, “The Corpse Walks Into a Bar”. The situations may be different, but the theme remains true. Each story is a complete story in short form with characters, plot, conflict, and resolution.

I love dark humor stories and in Unaccustomed to Grace, you’ll read some inexplicable circumstances and characters. Unaccustomed to Grace is not what I expected… it’s even better! If you take a glance at the title, you don’t think of zombies, do you? I didn’t either but when you delve into the bizarre, you realize how relevant this title is.
