Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands

Mythcon 53 will be held 2-5 August 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the theme "Fantasies of the Middle Lands." The author guest of honor is Eleanor Arnason, and the scholar guest of honor is Brian Attebery.

Mythcon 53 will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The hotel has full conference and catering facilities, so nearly everything we need will be in one place. This hotel is in a bustling shopping area full of stores, restaurants, and a megaplex movie theater, all within walking distances. We will be able to hold our Welcome Reception sponsored by the Council of Stewards, as well as our Sunday evening banquet, in this same building.

Sleeping room rates for convention attendees have been set at $129* per night for a regular room, and $139* per night for a small suite. The suites are the same as the regular room except for a small sitting room at the front, and that they open onto the hotel atrium. To reserve rooms online at the special convention rate, go to this page. If you prefer not to use web access to reserve a room, you can call the hotel directly at +1 (952) 542-8600 and use the code MCA.

Mythcon 53 online registration for Mythopoeic Society members, general public, and students — prices are in US dollars. These are advance rates until July 1, 2024. In-person rates will go up significantly just before the conference and at the door.

• Full Conference Registration (MythSoc member) $75.00
• Full Conference Registration (non-member) $90.00
• Full Conference Registration (Student*) $65.00
• Virtual Attendance Only (via Zoom/Discord) $20.00

* Full-time students; must present current, active student ID at check-in to get this rate.

Teitho May/June Challenge: Joker

The time has come for a Joker Theme for May/June!

In a game of cards, you can use the Joker card to replace any other. Now you can pick ANY of our past challenges that stir your imagination and write a story or create art for it!

You can finally write that story you wanted to write for that challenge once but didn't have time for it, or never quite got polished to your satisfaction.

You could even write a story for some of the challenges that Teitho had before you knew about its existence! Or any of our recent ones!

We’d love to see your stories!

Please submit your stories before June 30, 2024, to teitho.contest@gmail.com.

Rules for the Teitho Contest can be found here.

Monstrous May 2024

Monstrous May was first established in 2021, and I've arranged prompts for each May since - for each day of the month of May, there is a prompt involving and invoking the monstrous.

Create art, sculpture, write fiction, poetry, make whatever you feel inspired to! Create for as many or as few days as inspire you, collaborate with friends, and have fun.

Fan creations are just as welcome as original ones, and naturally, erotic and adult creations are as well as SFW ones!

Prompts are available on Tumblr.

Have some questions? Here’s the FAQ from 2021 or ask on Tumblr.

Fellowship of the Fics: Modern AU May

You know what doesn't get enough love? Modern AUs! This event is a trope mash-up of sorts. You (or your followers) can combine an AU setting, character occupation, and dialogue prompt. You have all month to make as many different combinations as you want!

Prompts are available on Fellowship of the Fic's tumblr.

And, of course, don’t forget to send us your fics when you are done so we can put them in our queue using this form!! Happy writing!

May challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The May challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. 
The thematic challenge for May is: name.
Tolkien has some interesting thoughts on naming.
Elves, depending on their background, can have mother names, father names and later given or adopted names, as well as adaptations of their names into other languages. Galadriel has all of these!
Dwarves, depending on the period, may have their own secret internal names and outward-facing names in Mannish languages.
Aragorn and Gandalf canonically both have multiple names, too.
The Quenya word for "name" is also the name of a Tengwa.
The Long List of the Ents has at its core a list of names.

The formal challenge is: acrostic.
This means that the first letters of your lines, sentences, paragraphs or sections should spell a word (or name!).
There is a selection of examples (prose and poetry) from the Tolkien fandom here on AO3.

Acrostics often spell out names or phrases containing names, but they can spell out any other word you like.
Also, as usual for these challenges, you can write about names or write an acrostic entirely independently of each other.
They can also be freely combined with prompts from other challenges, such as SWG's.

More details on the challenge at the linked entry.

New participants welcome!

May 2024 Calls for Papers

Oxonmoot 2024

Oxonmoot is an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together over 500 Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world. Oxonmoot 2024 will be our 51st, and will be held over four days, from the afternoon of Thursday 29th August until the afternoon of Sunday 1st September, and will be held at St Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, Oxford and Online.

We are pleased to welcome contributions of all types to the programme for Oxonmoot 2024.

The Talks and Papers strand will run through the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. Papers may be presented in person in Oxford or online via Zoom.

The Call for Papers is now open! Presentations may be submitted here. Deadline to submit a talk or paper is midnight UK time on May 12th. (UPDATE: The deadline for online presentations has been extended to midnight June 12!)

The Talks and Papers will be balanced by a wide range of other Activities – these could include, but are not limited to, workshops, demonstrations, discussions, games, physical activities, films & videos and social activities – but any and all offers are most welcome. Activities may take place in Oxford, online, or combine both online and in person participation, and may be scheduled alongside the Talks & Papers, or in the Evening (local time) time depending on the nature of the Activity. You can submit a proposal for an activity here. Activities have a deadline of 8 am UK time on 1 August 2024.

Participants with questions may contact the Activities Programme Co-Ordinator, or for social activities the Social Programme Co-Ordinator.

See the Oxonmoot 2024 page for more information or to register!

Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands

The Mythopoeic Society’s annual conference, popularly called “Mythcon,” will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota this year, from 2-5 August 2024. The idea of “middle-ness” can suggest stability—the center of an object is less likely to break than its edges. It can also suggest the opposite: something in a state of change can be said to be “in the middle”—neither one thing nor another. Mythcon 53, located in the middle of the continental U.S., welcomes papers exploring the concept of “middle-ness” as it is worked out in fantasy, science fiction, and related genres. Paper topics can cover a wide range of possibilities, including but not limited to the following:

• Locations: This could mean the implications of a place name including the word “middle,” such as Middle-earth or Midgard; places in our world that either shape or appear in fantasy such as the English Midlands or Middle America as in Stranger Things or American Gods; or even liminal places that appear in fantasy such as train stations, purgatory, or The Wood Between the Worlds.
• Characters: the middle child in a family (Arya Stark, Edmund Pevensie); adolescents negotiating that in-between space (Luce in The Owl House; Ged in Earthsea); individuals or people groups who are a mix of others (Tolkien’s Númenóreans; Percy Jackson).
• Textual middle-ness: intertextuality, genre-crossing, multiple media, even the middle books/movies of a trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers).
• Authors: considering the location of the con, Midwestern authors and scholars such as Tim O’Brian, Jack Zipes, Lois McMaster Bujold, or Philip Jose Farmer.

We also welcome papers on the work of either of our Guests of Honor, Brian Attebery and Eleanor Arnason. Because this conference is happening in conjunction with Diversicon, a multicultural, multimedia event dedicated to improving contacts among groups and individuals interested in speculative fiction, we are also interested in papers on their traditional Posthumous Guest, who this year is L. Frank Baum. And, as always, we welcome papers focusing on the work and interests of the Inklings (especially J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams), and other fantasy authors and themes. Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome.

Each paper will be given a one-hour slot to allow time for questions, but individual papers should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Panels are also welcome, and both papers and panels may be presented virtually or in person. Paper abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with contact information, should be sent to the Papers Coordinator at papers@mythcon.org by May 15, 2024. Please include your A/V requirements and the projected time needed for your presentation. If your programming interests are more in line with Diversicon’s focus (see http://www.diversicon.org/), then please send your proposal to scottl2605@aol.com.

Additional Links:
Mythcon 53 Conference Page
Mythcon 53 Registration

German Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien and His Editors

Tolkien, in paratextual parts of his main work The Lord of the Rings, introduced himself as the editor and translator of the Red Book of Westmarch. A similar conjecture can be found in Farmer Giles of Ham, which comes with a scholarly preface and purports to be the translation of a medieval manuscript. These rather playful examples should be set alongside the real-world editors of Tolkien’s works. In his will, Tolkien made his youngest son Christopher (1924-2020) his ‘literary executor’ with “full power to publish edit alter rewrite or complete any work of mine which may be unpublished at my death or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished works as he in his absolute discretion may think fit and subject thereto” (official copy of Tolkien’s will, 23 July, 1973). Until his death (16 January 2020), Christopher actively fulfilled his role as ‘literary executor’ and edited and made available to a wide audience countless texts from Tolkien’s estate – and thus strongly influenced the perception and understanding of the works already published during Tolkien’s lifetime. Above all, The Silmarillion (1977), which he edited and, as was established in retrospect (Kane 2009), was heavily modified by him, had a major influence on Tolkien research.

In addition to the central figure of Christopher Tolkien, who could have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2024, the roles of the editors Stanley and Rayner Unwin, the biographer Humphrey Carpenter (Biography; Letters), the student and later colleague Alan Bliss (Hengest and Finn), the daughter-in-law Baillie Tolkien (The Father Christmas Letters) or the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship should also be examined.

The aim of this seminar is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to explore the various questions and problems posed by the publication of Tolkien’s work.

Possible starting points for presentations would be:

• Christopher Tolkien (1924-2020) as ‘co-author’ of Tolkien’s work
• Censorship and restriction: the search for the ‘true’ Tolkien biography
• Tolkien’s posthumous academic work
• The publication of the works on the Elvish (and other) languages
• Access to and handling of Tolkien’s manuscripts and notes in the Bodleian and the Marquette

The 20th Seminar of the German Tolkien Society is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and will take place in a hybrid format at the RWTH Aachen from 11-13 October 2024. 

Interested applicants are requested to send a short synopsis (no longer than one page) and a short biography as well as their preference (attendance in person or online presentation) to Thomas Fornet-Ponse by 31 May 2024: hither-shore@tolkiengesellschaft.de

See the full call for papers here.

Journal of Tolkien Research Special Issue: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Queer scholarship in Tolkien studies has made great strides in recent years, from David Craig’s “‘Queer Lodgings’: Gender and Sexuality in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” (2001) to Jane Chance’s Tolkien, Self and Other (2016) and Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor’s Tolkien and Alterity (2017). At a critical juncture of growth, this sub-field is poised to evaluate and address any gaps that exist as the field moves forward. One such gap, in both Tolkien studies and queer studies, is asexuality and aromanticism, which, while part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, are significantly underrepresented in scholarship and interpretation.

Asexuality, defined broadly as not experiencing sexual attraction to other people, and aromanticism, not experiencing romantic attraction to other people, convey a spectrum of individual experiences (ace-spectrum, or aspec). Aspec perspectives not only represent these individual identities and experiences but also illuminate and refresh understandings of love, desire, relationships, communities, and culture. Implemented within literary interpretation, an aspec lens offers insights into characters, plots, themes, narrative structures, and much more.

In order to address a gap in queer scholarship in Tolkien studies and to solicit new perspectives that can deepen understandings of Tolkien’s work, we invite submissions for a proposed special issue in Journal of Tolkien Research that focuses on asexuality and aromanticism in Tolkien’s work.

Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Aspec readings of individual characters
• Interpretations of love/relationships beyond (but not necessarily excluding) romantic, sexual, and/or platonic love
• Intersections between aspec theory and gender, disability, race, or other critical theory
• Comparative readings between Tolkien’s work and other fiction
• Amatonormativity or aspec aspects in Tolkien’s work, life, and historical context
• Reception of Tolkien’s work by aspec readers
• Aspec interpretations within adaptations of Tolkien’s work
• Interpretations focused on specific identities within the ace-spectrum, including demi-
• sexual/romantic, grey-sexual/romantic, etc.

Proposals/abstracts of a maximum of 300 words, along with a short bio and working bibliography (not included in word count), should be sent via email to aspectolkien@gmail.com no later than midnight Eastern Time on August 31, 2024.

Signum University Regional Moots

These small, regional conferences are held at various dates and locations. See the Regional Moots page for more details.

Many thanks to Robin Anne Reid and her Online Conference Project for handily compiling this information on a regular basis!

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week 2024

Ekphrasis: the description or interpretation of a piece of art, usually visual, in a different artistic medium.

Material culture and art add vibrancy to our lives, and it seems that there are so many options in Middle Earth ripe for interpretation! A poem on Nerdanel's statues, a tapestry capturing Nessa's dance, a prose fic describing the impact of seeing Númenor's frescoes, a painting exploring the beautiful quotidian architecture of a Hobbit hole…

This is a Tolkien-fandom-wide event dedicated to the art of ekphrasis in Tolkien's worlds. Its goal is to illuminate the artistic surroundings of the places, people, and stories we love, in as many media as possible. As such, fanworks are welcome to take almost any form: see the FAQ for the full list!

The prompts are multi-part. The first part of the prompt is mandatory, describing the kind of art to be interpreted. The subsequent parts are optional thematic, formal, or visual add-ons that people may choose to incorporate or not.

For example: "Day N. Art form: Metalwork. Formal prompt (writing): Epistolary format. Formal prompt (visual art): Mixed media. Thematic prompt: Trade and cross-cultural connection."

If you miss the day, or are desperate to create work about some form of art not included in the prompts, don't worry! Posting amnesty/prompt free-for-all day will be June 17, and posting here and in the AO3 Collection will be open for a year from June 10, 2024.

How it works: Prompts are currently being posted! Participants will have slightly more than two months to create whatever sort of art they like inspired by one or more of those prompts. Then, no later than June 9 at 5 PM PST, they will post their works to the AO3 Collection (linked above), tagged with the appropriate day. The mod will do a quick check, and then the week of reveals will begin. During the week of June 10-June 16, pre-posted fanworks will be revealed daily according to theme (see calendar) in the AO3 Collection and reblogged on Tumblr. On June 17, anyone who missed the deadline will have an opportunity to post their late works and have them celebrated on Amnesty Day.

In short, the timeline is:
- Read prompts starting March 17.
- Create!
- Post tagged work to AO3 before June 9 deadline.
- Enjoy daily reveals between June 10 and June 16.
- Amnesty day June 17 for late posters.

Inclusion

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week is open to all characters, genres, and ratings, and all Tolkien canons. This includes books, movies both live-action and animated, fan-made films like Born of Hope, TV shows that have aired (so yes to Rings of Power, no to the yet-unreleased Rohan animated series), and game canons such as Lord of the Rings Online. It also includes Tolkien's non-Arda fictional works, such as Roverandom. Crossovers between two or more Tolkien canons are welcome.

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week wants to be as inclusive as possible. As such:

• All canons and versions of canon are equally welcome and encouraged to participate.
• Fan creators of all levels of experience should feel more than welcome to join in the fun.
• All languages are welcomed, and works in languages other than English are actively encouraged.
• All styles of art and all types of fic are permitted. Apart from following the Art Form content prompt for each day, there are no restrictions on genre, style, rating, or ship. There are two exceptions: first, no character bashing; second, no AI-generated writing or art.

Above all, this event is supposed to get us thinking and feeling about art, which is for everyone. With this in mind, TEW asks participants to be respectful and inclusive at all times. In particular, TEW values its queer and trans participants and participants of color and will moderate as necessary to ensure that this event remains a welcoming space.

Please see the FAQ for all rules and full instructions on how to post and tag.

Calendar

June 9, 2024: Submit all works to the AO3 Collection by this date

June 10-16, 2024: Reveals

• June 10 - AO3 collection reveals begin with Day 1 Prompt (Ceramics and Glasswork)
• June 11 - Day 2 Prompt (Culinary Arts)
• June 12 - Day 3 Prompt (In-Universe Religious and Devotional Art)
• June 13 - Day 4 Prompt (Sculpture)
• June 14 - Day 5 Prompt (Textiles and Fashion)
• June 15 - Day 6 Prompt (Theater and Drama)
• June 16 - Day 7 Prompt (Woodworking and Carpentry)
• June 17 - Amnesty Day and Free-for-all posting
• March 17, 2025: 2024 AO3 Collection and DW community close to posting.

Housekeeping

The DW site is the primary home of Tolkien Ekphrasis Week: this is where to check first for dates, news, FAQs, links, and prompts!

Prompts will also be posted on Tumblr. The Tumblr blog will be used for event promotion ahead of the event, answering questions via the ask function, and reblogging your creations, if they are posted and tagged on Tumblr.

This event does not and will not exist on any other form of social media other than Tumblr and DW, though I encourage you to spread the word in your other online communities.

If you have any questions, you can get in touch with the mod, chestnut_pod, via Tumblr ask or comments on the Tolkien Ekphrasis Week Dreamwidth post.

Links

Tumblr Blog | Dreamwidth Community | AO3 Collection | FAQ

Teitho April/May Challenge: Quotes

Teitho is a monthly fanfiction contest. Our April/May prompt uses the source material directly for inspiration. Choose any of the following quotes as inspiration for your story.

1. From The Silmarillion: “the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.”

2. From The Hobbit: “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

3. From The Lord of the Rings: “All’s well as ends Better!”

What thoughts and feelings do these quotes inspire? They may come from different books and from different characters, but they can encompass many moments from Tolkien’s legendarium.

The tales of Beleriand may have inspired song but so did the events of the Last Alliance, the search for the Entwives, the destruction on the One ring, the ride of the Rohirrim.

Many characters find something on their adventures—it could be an object but sometimes it’s a secret, unexpected information, or even something they learn about themselves.

Perhaps you would like to write about the moments those words reference? What did Mandos think of Fëanor’s words? Fingolfin? The Noldor gathered in that place?

There is no requirement to use the quote directly in your story but you are free to do so, if you like.

We are excited to read your submissions! Please email your stories to teitho.contest@gmail.com by May 31!

Find more about Teitho here.

Forgotten Ground Regained: Call for Submissions

The Fall issue of Forgotten Ground Regained is open for submissions. I am especially interested in poetry that explores themes of love, devotion, and desire – themes that are, thus far, relatively sparsely represented in modern English alliterative verse. Submissions should be sent to Paul D. Deane at the following email address: pdeane [at] alliteration.net.

Requirements

• Submissions must be in modern English, but authors should feel free to submit poems that take advantage of the diction, rhythms, and syntax of particular language varieties and communities. I do not discriminate against Scots, Appalachian English, Black English Vernacular, Indian English, or any other language variety, though I do ask that authors be prepared to supply notes to explain any terms or expressions that outsiders to their communities may not readily understand.
• Submissions should make skillful, systematic use of alliteration in ways that use alliteration to reinforce the rhythm and connect important ideas. Overall, I prefer poems that have the strongest impact on readers when they are read aloud. I therefore encourage authors to include links to audio or video versions of their poems in their submissions.
• I would love to see people experimenting with modern English versions of Old and Middle English alliterative verse, with Old Norse forms like ljoòahattr and drottkvætt or modern Icelandic rimur, or with new alliterative forms designed to highlight modern English rhythms and speech patterns. While my first preference is what traditional scholarship calls alliterative-accentual verse, I am also open to alliterative free verse or to alliterative versions of traditional forms, such as the ballad, as long as the alliteration is clearly a structural rather than a decorative feature of the form. 
• I am open to work both by contemporary poets and to projects that would normally be considered to fall outside the literary mainstream, such as speculative poetry, SCA Bardic Arts projects, and fan fiction.
• There is no hard upper length limit, though poems more than five to six pages in length are likely to be published separately on the website, with links provided from the Fall issue, rather than being included directly in the pdf magazine. Note that I love both both the lyrical and the narrative turns in poetry, so longer narratives will be given careful consideration.
• Please submit your poem in the body of your email. I will not open attachments.

Submissions for the Fall Issue must be received by September 15th, 2024.

WIP Big Bang 2024

The WIP Big Bang has one goal in mind: to clean out your fanfic drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them!

Schedule

All times are by 11:59pm PST. Convert time zones.

Sign-ups Begin- April 15th
Sign-ups Close- May 21st
Check In #1- May 22nd
Check In #2- June 15th
Snippets Due- July 1st
Art Claims Begin- July 17th
Check In #3- July 22nd
Check In #4- August 6th
Rough Drafts Due- August 15th
Posting Claims Begin- August 23rd
Posting Claims Ends- September 1st
Final Drafts/Art Due- September 7th
Posting Starts- September 8th

FAQ | 2024 WIP Big Bang Sign Up

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB) 2024

First conceived in 2018, the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (or TRSB!) is a Tolkien-fandom-wide event celebrating the talent of our fanwork creators. At its core, the event is about bringing together the artistic side of our fandom with the literary talents it possesses, creating bridges between the separate areas of fandom experience for the enjoyment of all. During the late spring, signed up artists submit fan art pieces in progress or finished, which is then posted anonymously in our Gallery. The Gallery is open to the pool of writers who have signed up for the event only. Each writer is then invited to claim a piece of art to write for; the minimum word count is 5000.

We are open to all characters, genres, ships and ratings, and all canons that fall under the Tolkien fandom umbrella. This includes movieverse (i.e. the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies), lesser known works by Tolkien (such as The Father Christmas Letters), and/or other works with a clear link to his life or creative output (for example, Tolkien’s translations and academic texts, the 2019 Tolkien biopic, fan-made films like Born of Hope, and game canons such as Lord of the Rings Online). Crossovers between two or more Tolkien canons are permitted.

When we started this event, one thing we absolutely agreed on was our desire for maximum inclusivity. In practice this means that:

• We encourage participation from all sections of the Tolkien fandom, whether you prefer bookverse, movieverse, game canon, smaller canons, or Tolkien’s academic papers.
• Fan creators should ALL feel safe and able to join in, regardless of experience levels or perceived ability. This means that everybody is welcome, whether they’re a professional artist/writer or a complete beginner, whether they’ve been a fan for decades or fell in love with the films last weekend.
• As far as practically possible, all styles of art and all types of fic are permitted. We do not set restrictions on genre, style, rating or ship, although we do keep NSFW art submissions behind a lock, for the safety of our younger participants.

Above all, the event is supposed to be fun. Fandom should not be a place of difficulty, conflict and stress. With this in mind, we ask participants to be kind, inclusive, respectful and welcoming at all times.

Schedule

March 17 – 2023 Gallery Opens

The Gallery for 2023 is live at last! Enjoy all the beautiful pieces created for last year’s TRSB!

March 24 – Suggestion Form Opens

This form gives potential authors (or anyone else who wants to play!) the opportunity to suggest characters, places and scenarios they would like to see in the submitted art. We will post a link to the form on our Tumblr blog and here on the website. The answers will feed into a publicly available spreadsheet listing the ideas submitted; artists can peruse this to get inspired!

April 14 – Sign-ups Open

We post links to our sign up form on all the usual platforms. You can then sign up as an artist, an author, a beta, a cheerleader, a pinch hitter, or as two or more of these. Please see the ‘Signing Up’ section of the FAQ for more details on what these terms mean.

May 5 – Artist Sign-up Deadline

May 10 – Discord Server Opens

May 13 – Art Draft Due

Participating art submissions must be sent to the mods by this date to be eligible for the Claims Gallery.
For more details on how to do this, see the ‘Art Submissions’ section of the FAQ. Artists may submit up to two pieces of art, for claiming by two separate authors.

May 17 – Art Preview Opens

Our online gallery will be visible to signed up participants only.  Signed up authors can browse the artworks and see which pieces appeal to their muses!

May 18-19 Discord Art Talks

Repeating the fun from last year, these will be live chats on discord with mod presence – start times to be announced – where we go through the beautiful gallery and admire the work of our artists.

May 20 – Author Signups Deadline

May 25 – CLAIMS – 17:00 UTC

Authors submit a ranked list of the artworks they would like to claim to write fic for. Claims are on a first come, first served basis. One artwork will be allocated to each claiming author in the first instance; the mods will email you to confirm which piece you have successfully claimed and how to get in touch with your artist. See the ‘Claims’ section of the FAQ for more information.

What time is that for me?

TBA – Additional Claims

If a number of artworks are left unclaimed, we may allow authors to claim second and third pieces of art to write for. However, we don’t know until after claims night whether this will be needed, so this is likely to be announced at short notice – keep an eye on the blog and on your emails to avoid missing out.

June 7 – Post-Claims Check-in

The mods will email each artist/author pair to ensure that you have successfully established contact – even if you are not planning on a close collaboration, it is polite to check in with your partner, say hello, and make sure you’re both clear on must-haves and do-not-wants. One person from your pair must respond and confirm that you have done this!

June 16 – Free Rein Art Due

We know some artists like to give their authors as much creative freedom as possible and we have a dedicated collaboration option for this (see ‘Art Submissions’ FAQs). However, this means we require these artists to provide finished art to their authors much earlier than artists who are prepared to be more involved. See ‘Completing the Artwork’ in the FAQs for more details on how this works.

June 28 – Check-in #2

The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQ.

June 26 – Check-in #3

The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQs.

August 9 – Final Art Due

Artists should share a copy of the final art to their authors – but don’t post it yet!

Don’t email it to the mods.

August 16 – Final Check-in (#4)

Deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter. There will be no penalty for dropping out on or before this date.
As per other check ins, except the mods will be providing instructions about promotional posts (see ‘Promotional Posts’ FAQ for more information). We will also ask you:

• Whether you have discussed posting logistics with your artist (if you’re embedding art in your AO3 story, for example)
• Whether you have specific posting needs re publicizing date/time frame (e.g. not wanting us to reblog your art/fic on Shabbat as you will be unable to respond)

August 26 – Art Can Be Posted

August 30 – Final Fic Due In Collection

Authors should post their stories in our AO3 collection with the artwork embedded or linked. (If you are writing a last minute pinch hit we can be a bit flexible with this deadline.)

TBA – Discord Art Reveals Event

September 6 – COLLECTION REVEALS

September 13 – Staggered Tumblr Reblogs Begin

September 20 – Gallery Submission

October 6 – Discord Server Closes

Other Links

• Rules
• Sign-Ups
• Frequently Asked Questions
• TRSB on Tumblr | Twitter | Instagram | Dreamwidth

Acorns and Oak Leaves: A Year of Bagginshield

Throughout 2024, the Bagginshield community Acorns and Oak Leaves offers monthly prompts to encourage new creations of all kinds (i.e. art, fics, gifs, etc) - but don't worry, there are no deadlines. Pick and choose whatever prompts you like, and be sure to tag the @acorns-and-oakleaves blog on Tumblr so we can share your Bagginshield creations!

Monthly prompts for the Year of Bagginshield can be found here.

Acorns and Oak Leaves also has a Discord server!