Happy Halloween! On this episode, I welcome "The Queen of Halloween" Lesley Bannatyne! She is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. One of the country's foremost authorities on Halloween, Bannatyne has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel, the Travel Channel, and with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia.
Lesley has written five books on Halloween, ranging from a children's book, Witches Night Before Halloween, to her latest book, Halloween Nation, which examines the holiday through the eyes of its celebrants. 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, which 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, and Bosque Literary Magazines; she won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction. As a freelance journalist, she covered stories ranging from druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia.
So, turn on your porchlight and get ready to fall under the spell of "The Queen of Halloween" Lesley Bannatyne on The Necronomicast!
