Katharine Briggs Award shortlist 2011

The judges have announced this year's very strong shortlist for the Katharine Briggs Award. The book prize was established to encourage the study of Folklore, to help improve the standard of Folklore publications in Britain, to establish The Folklore Society as an arbiter of excellence and to commemorate the life and work of Katharine M. Briggs. The shortlisted titles (alphabetical by author) are:

Gary Fine and Bill Ellis, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumours of Terrorism, Immigration and Trade Matter (OUP, 2010)
Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini, Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500-1800 (Ashgate, 2010)
Herbert Halpert and JDA Widdowson, Folk Tales, Tall Tales, Trickster Tales and Legends of the Supernatural from the Pinelands of New Jersey: Recorded and Annotated by Herbert Halpert between 1936 and 1951 (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010)
Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (OUP, 2010)
Steve Roud, The Lore of the Playground: One Hundred Years of Children's Games, Rhymes and Traditions (Random House, 2010)
Jay M. Smith, Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast (Harvard UP, 2011)
Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (OUP, 2011)
Jack Zipes, The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-tale Films (Taylor and Francis, 2010)

My congratulations to all the authors. The winner will be announced at the Katharine Briggs Evening, 9th November (see the FLS Facebook page or the website for further details). The Briggs lecture will be given by Michael Rosen on 'Folk tradition: What do we do with it?' Alessandro Portelli, one of the shortlisted authors, will also be in London the night before to give the Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture at the Bishopsgate Institute.