Bad Clowns, by Benjamin Radford, won the 2017 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Bronze Medal for Popular Culture. Award-winning books will be presented with IPPY medals on May 30 at the annual BookExpo publishing convention in New York. Honoring the best independently published books, the 2017 IPPY Awards drew 5,000 entries.
“One word to describe this year’s IPPY medal-winning books is vivid—from the colors and images of the art and photography books, to the creativity and imaginative storytelling of the fiction,” said Jim Barnes, director of the Awards. “Independent publishing is all about passion, for the topics, the causes, and for sharing great writing and publishing with a world of readers.”
The first book to examine bad clowns as cultural—and countercultural—icons, Bad Clowns provides a definitive look behind the dark smile. Drawing from a variety of perspectives, including pop culture, folklore, psychology, and sociology, Radford investigates the history of bad clowns, why clowns go bad, and why many people fear them.
Radford is a writer, investigator, and columnist for Discovery News. He is the author of eight books, most recently Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment and Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore, both published by the University of New Mexico Press. Radford lives in Corrales, New Mexico.
To view the complete list of winners, visit Independent Publisher.
For more information, visit UNM Press.