Around the World and Web

Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.

Teitho November/December Contest: Healing

Welcome to the Teitho Contest, where you can participate with a variety of other writers and artists and send in stories and pictures based on our themes.

Join us in this writing and drawing contest!

A new challenge is posted every month. On the first day of the challenge, we announce a new theme on this site. You then have two months to create your entry, which has to be finished when you send it in.

After the deadline of the contest, the voting period begins. Based on the number of entries, it lasts for two or more weeks. The winners are usually announced a day or two after the end of the voting. Teitho remains one of the last prompt-based, independent, Tolkien fan-fiction/fan art monthly contests. Full contest guidelines are here.

Our prompt this month is Healing.

Healing figures significantly in many of Tolkien’s works. We encounter healers like Elrond, the staff of the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, Aragorn and the healing hands of the King.

We see many characters being healed—Frodo, Faramir, Eowyn, Merry.

Healing isn’t only confined to physical injury—there is healing of mental and emotional hurts as well.

And we also see incomplete healing—where characters may be healed of bodily injuries swiftly but the horrors and trauma they endured persist—Maedhros, Gwindor, Frodo.

Healing also affects the land in Tolkien. Ithilien—where Legolas and his people go at Aragorn’s request, to rejuvenate and cleanse the land—is just one example of this.

Healing can also be seen in the context of interpersonal relationships—Maedhros healing the rift in the house of Finwë, the repair of Bilbo and Thorin’s friendship at the end of the Battle of Five Armies.

What stories of healing will you give us? We can’t wait to see where your imagination takes you!

Stories or art should be submitted to teitho.contest@gmail.com by Dec 31!

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2024

So, it's that time of the year again: time to sign up for the Lord of the Rings Secret Santa exchange! Slash, femslash, het and gen; you can request it all, so why not join in?

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa has been going for twenty-one years, and we'd love to see you join us and keep the tradition going.

LotR SeSa has been a traditional exchange since its inception, but we continue to adapt and refine the exchange to best serve all participants. The exchange has been in the form of a prompt meme since 2020. If you are new to the format, AO3 has a helpful FAQ here.

This year's timeline (2024)

  • Prompt Posting: November 1st to 25th.
  • Claiming: November 26th to December 27th.
  • Collection Open for Posting: November 26th to December 27th.
  • All Fills Due: December 27th

You will be able to post up to 2 prompts, and we will do our best to make sure that at least one of your prompts is filled.

Please note that this is an FPF challenge. (i.e. Fictional, not real people fiction/RPF.) We're always open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth, which means that characters from The Hobbit and The Rings of Power are welcome too!

The Rules (2024)

  1. You will be able to post up to 2 prompts between November 1st and 25th, and we will do our best to make sure at least one of your prompts is filled.
  2. Your fill is due December 27th 11:59 pm Pacific Time (you can check what that is in your time zone here). Please post it to AO3 (and nowhere else, until January 3rd).
  3. As a matter of fairness, please make your story more than 750 words (1000 is better).
  4. Signing up: the sign up form can be found here (or here if the main link gives you an error message). If you need help with signing up, please don't hesitate to contact the mods at lotrsesa[AT]gmail.com.
  5. Once claiming has opened, please only claim a prompt if you plan on actually fulfilling your end of the bargain, and please only claim one prompt at a time. After you have completed your fill, you may claim a new one.
  6. Claiming a prompt: use the "Claim" button next to the prompt you want to claim. (You can find open prompts under "Prompts" in the sidebar.) Several people can claim the same prompt. You can also claim a prompt without having submitted any of your own.

It's a good idea to join the LotR_SeSa LiveJournal community or the Dreamwidth community so you can keep track of any admin posts. You can also follow us here on Tumblr.

Kiliel Week 2024

Kiliel Week will run on Tumblr from November 17-23, 2024 and accepts all types of fanwork for the Kili/Tauriel pairing.

We accept fic and fanart but also moodboards, edits, playlists and anything else your fannish heart wants!

We take submissions not in English. If you speak a language other than English and want to submit something in that language, please send it in!! We would be happy to reblog it!

If you are submitting something NSFW please tag the @tolkienpinupcalendar. If you are interested we are collabing with @tolkienpinupcalendar for the simultaneously run Kiliel Smut Week!

How do I submit:

Tag @kilielweek, and use the tag #kilielweek2024

If the post is also for Kiliel Smut Week please also tag @tolkienpinupcalendar and use the tag #tpckilielsmutweek

Prompts are available here.

November challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The challenge for November has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. 

The thematic challenge for November is: refuge.

The formal challenge is: include imitation of a sound.
The simplest way to do this is to include a pre-existing word that imitates a sound, for instance: meow, which imitates a sound made by a cat.
But you can also try for something more challenging, if you like: can you make the sound of your sentence or phrase imitate the flowing of a river or the rustling of trees?
Also, think of what Treebeard does with bits of Elvish, stringing them together in Entish fashion:
Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna Tumbaletaurëa Lómëanor
Like him, feel free to make things up!

As always, these can be filled independently and also freely combined with SWG and other challenges. 

New participants welcome!

More details on these challenges at the linked post.

November 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals

Popular Culture Association: Tolkien Studies Area

The Tolkien Studies Area (TSA) welcomes proposals in any area of Tolkien studies. We welcome scholars in all period specializations, from all disciplines, using any critical theory. We encourage interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary as well as collaborative work. The TSA defines "Tolkien studies" as including, but not limited to, Tolkien's Legendarium; adaptations, transformative works, and translations; cultural studies; critical race studies; digital and new media studies; fan and reception studies; feminist, gender, and queer studies; literary studies; medieval and medievalist studies; media and marketing; religious studies; source studies; tourism studies; and translation studies.

Academics, independent scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students are invited to submit individual paper proposals, paper session proposals, and/or roundtable proposals. Presenters may present one paper and participate in one roundtable session.

All presenters must join the Popular Culture Association as members as well as pay a registration fee to attend the conference. These are separate fees that have been restructured to a tiered system taking into account that PCA members range from undergraduates to retirees, with salaries ranging from part-time, minimum wage to retiree pensions and social security.

All PCA sessions are scheduled in 1.5-hour slots. Paper sessions consist of four presenters, each speaking for fifteen minutes, followed by a group Q&A.

Roundtables are informal interactive discussions between five to seven participants and the audience. A roundtable focuses on a timely topic and is designed to raise questions and brainstorm for future scholarship. If you have an idea for a special topic for an academic journal issue or for an anthology, email Robin to find out how to organize a paper session and/or roundtable on the topic!

For individual paper proposals, please submit contact information (name, institutional affiliation [or "independent scholar"], e-mail address, and telephone number), your presentation's title, and a 500-word proposal describing your topic, chosen theory, methodology, argument, and its relevance to current scholarship.

For a paper session proposal, please submit your contact information, all the presenters' contact information, and a 100–300-word proposal for the session. All participants for your proposed paper session or roundtable must register for the conference and submit their individual proposals through the PCA database so they can be added to the paper session.

If you wish to organize a roundtable, please contact me directly at robinareid@fastmail.com. Only Area Chairs or PCA Admins can enter roundtables into the PCA database. Please note that the TSA can schedule only two roundtables; however, there are no limits on the number of paper sessions we can present!

The 2025 PCA Conference will be held in-person at the Marriott in New Orleans, from April 16-19, 2025.

See the 2025 PCA Conference website to submit paper proposals. Proposals are due by November 30, 2024.

Call for Proposals: Anthology on Women and Gender

We invite submissions for an anthology focused on women and gender in Tolkien’s writings, ‘Great Heart and Strength:’ New Essays on Women and Gender in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. In 2015, Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan published Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the first volume dedicated to the subject of women in Tolkien’s works and life, which collected the major milestones of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies alongside new essays. Since then, feminist scholarship and gender theory has flourished in and outside of Tolkien studies. This volume will honor Croft and Donovan’s work and build on the past decade of feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies by presenting a new collection of essays on women and gender in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Please send your proposal (no more than 300 words) and a short bio (100 words) to cami.agan@oc.edu by March 15, 2025.Working bibliographies encouraged.

Proposals should focus on women and gender in the legendarium or in non-legendarium texts by J.R.R. Tolkien, reflecting contemporary feminist and intersectional theory. Proposals may also focus on non-binary, trans, and gender fluid interpretations, as well as non-anthropomorphic topics such as landscapes and environments. All proposals should convey a thorough knowledge of previous feminist scholarship in Tolkien studies as well as current theory outside of Tolkien studies. We highly encourage intersectional work, which analyzes how gender intersects with other aspects of identity (such as race, sexuality, class, etc.).

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Female characters in the legendarium
  • Female characters in Tolkien’s non-legendarium works (such as The Fall of Arthur, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, etc.)
  • Non-binary, trans, and gender fluid interpretations of characters
  • Landscapes, environments, and material culture
  • Historical conceptions of gender
  • Intersections with race, sexuality, socio-economic class, etc.
  • Postcolonial analyses
  • Women and gender in adaptations of Tolkien’s work
  • Women scholars of the legendarium and/or women-centered treatments of Tolkien’s legendarium

Mythcon, the conference of the Mythopoeic Society, is scheduled for August 2025, and its theme is Women and Gender in Sci-Fi Fantasy, and we hope to organize several panels from the accepted submissions.

Mythopoeic Society Online Midsummer Seminar: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy

The Mythopoeic Society invites paper submissions for an online conference that focuses on intersectional feminist approaches to women and gender in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction or other mythopoeic work. While the focus of this seminar is women and gender in mythopoeic works, we encourage proposals that acknowledge and analyze the intersectionality of gender with other aspects of identity, experience, and embodiment, including the non-human. Proposals should engage with developments in women and gender studies that both acknowledge and seek to move beyond the work of Perilous and Fair, drawing on theories and methodologies from recent years.

Papers, panels, and roundtables from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome. We are interested in ANY form of media — text, graphic novels, comics, television, movies, music and music videos, games — as long as it can be described as fantasy or otherwise mythopoeic. We also welcome papers on the work of either of our Guests of Honor.

Each presentation will receive a 50-minute slot to allow time for questions, but individual presentations should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Two or three presenters who wish to present short, related papers may also share one 50-minute slot.

Individual proposals (~200 words) with bios (150 words, maximum) should be sent to: oms-chair @ mythcon.org by March 31, 2025.

Group (two or three presenters) proposals should group the individual proposals together to send to: oms-chair @ mythcon.org by March 31, 2025.

Working bibliographies are welcome, but not required.

The seminar will be held August 2-5, 2025 on Zoom and Discord.

The full call for papers and more on the midsummer online seminar can be found here.

Coming Soon: Call for Proposals for McFarland's Critical Explorations in Tolkien Studies Series

We are sharing this information on behalf of Robin Anne Reid:

I recently signed a Letter of Agreement with McFarland Publishers to become the series editor for a new series, Critical Explorations in Tolkien Studies. The series will open for proposals in 2025 after I assemble an advisory board.

Scholars can submit proposals in either of two tracks. The first track is for single-author or collaborative monographs and edited collections written for academic experts that should be between 70-100K words long. The second track is for shorter Critical Companions, between 40-50K words long, written for a general audience including but not limited to students and fans. Submissions for both tracks will go through a double-blind peer review process.

Proposals on topics relating to Tolkien's published works as well as to the edited posthumous publications; the adaptations for film, television, and games; the translations; and fan transformative works (textual and visual) or other reception studies may be submitted to either track.

While peer-reviewed scholarship is a professional necessity for tenure-track and tenured academics, there is also value in shorter works, informed by critical theories, that focus on an aspect of single work or a thematic group of works, especially ones that have received less critical attention than The Lord of the Rings. The Critical Companions are designed to introduce a more general audience to analytical approaches and the scholarship in Tolkien studies by situating works in their socio-historical contexts; explaining how the text or texts fit into the field of Tolkien studies; and modelling how to apply critical theories to analyze primary texts.

The primary goals of the series are to add significant original contributions to Tolkien scholarship by developing and to create and support greater diversity in the field by embracing a wide definition of what Tolkien studies includes in relation to authors, texts, topics, theories, and methods.

Both single author and collaborative works, especially those foregrounding intersectionality, are explicitly welcome from authors without regard to ability status, age, caste, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, or sexuality. Approaches can include but are not limited to theories and methods from class studies, cultural studies, critical race studies; digital and new media studies; fan and reception studies; feminist, gender, and queer studies; film studies, languages and linguistics, literary studies (any period); medieval and medievalist studies; pedagogical studies, modernist and postmodernist studies, media and marketing studies; religious and theological studies; source studies; stylistics, and tourism studies.

Contingent faculty, early-career faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, tenure-track and tenured faculty in the Americas and worldwide who are trained in any discipline and period specialization are invited to submit proposals in either track and to consider applying to become m become a member of the advisory board.

The call for applications to the advisory board will be circulated shortly. Please email robinareid@fastmail with any questions you may have.

Tolkien at UVM 2025: Tolkien and War

The theme for the 2025 Tolkien at UVM conference will be Tolkien and War. The conference will be held on April 5, 2025, at the University of Vermont. Recent conferences have been hybrid and welcomed presentations and attendees online as well.

Signum University Regional Moots

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

Journal of Fandom Studies: Open Call for Papers

Journal of Fandom Studies seeks to offer scholars a dedicated, peer-reviewed publication that promotes current scholarship into the fields of fan and audience studies across a variety of media. We focus on the critical exploration, within a wide range of disciplines and fan cultures, of issues surrounding production and consumption of popular media (including film, music, television, sports and gaming).

The editors welcome general papers (between 6000 and 9000 words), interviews and book reviews (between 800 and 1200 words) as well as suggestions for thematic issues.

All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.

See the Journal of Fandom Studies open call for papers for more information.

White Oliphaunt 2024

In the White Oliphaunt gift exchange, Tolkien fans sign up to exchange humorous gifts with each other.

Schedule

  • Sign ups open: November 1st 
  • Sign ups close: November 30th 
  • Assignments out: December 1st 
  • Anonymous posting + Last call for dropouts: December 24th 
  • Gift reveal: December 31st

Tolkien Society: Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference

The Tolkien Society is pleased to announce it will be hosting the online Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th November 2024. Registration is free and can be done on the conference webpage.

Confirmed Speakers

  • Douglas A. Anderson — editor of The Annotated Hobbit
  • Nicholas Birns — author of The Literary Role of History in the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Sara Brown — lecturer on Tolkien, and Language and Literature Department Chair at Signum University
  • Sonali Chunodkar — researcher on secondary beliefs in Tolkien’s works
  • Michael D. C. Drout — editor of Beowulf and the Critics, and J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia; co-editor of Tolkien Studies
  • Vincent Ferré — Professor in Comparative Literature (University Sorbonne Nouvelle), translator, and editor of Dictionnaire Tolkien. Literary advisor to the Estate of Christopher Tolkien
  • Dimitra Fimi — Tolkien scholar and fantasy professor at the University of Glasgow, co-editor of A Secret Vice, author of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History
  • Verlyn Flieger — editor of Smith of Wootton Major, The Story of Kullervo, and The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun; author of Splintered Light
  • William Fliss — Tolkien archivist at Marquette University’s Raynor Library
  • John Garth — author of Tolkien and the Great War, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien at Exeter College
  • Christopher Gilson — chief editor of Parma Eldalamberon and leading member of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship
  • Nick Groom — author of Twenty-First-Century Tolkien
  • Peter Grybauskas — editor of The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
  • Wayne G. Hammond — co-editor of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Roverandom, and co-author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion
  • Andrew Higgins — co-editor of A Secret Vice
  • Thomas Honegger — co-editor of Sub-creating Arda and Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Carl F. Hostetter — editor of The Nature of Middle-earth and Vinyar Tengwar
  • John Howe — artist who has illustrated covers for The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The History of Middle-earth
  • Yvette Kisor — researcher on medieval literature and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, co-editor of Tolkien Studies and Tolkien and Alterity
  • Kristine Larsen — writer and researcher on science and astronomy in Tolkien’s works
  • Alan Lee — artist who has illustrated The Lord of the Rings, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Númenor
  • Ted Nasmith — artist who has illustrated The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales
  • Richard Ovenden — Bodley’s Librarian and co-editor of The Great Tales Never End
  • John D. Rateliff — author of The History of The Hobbit
  • Robin Reid — researcher on Tolkien fandom, fan fiction, and race in Tolkien’s works
  • Christina Scull — co-editor of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Roverandom, and co-author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion
  • Brian Sibley — author of The Fall of Númenor
  • Chris Smith — the Tolkien editor of HarperCollins
  • James Tauber — researcher on corpus linguistics and digital humanities for Tolkien’s works

The full schedule will be published closer to the event.

Teitho October/November Challenge: Legacy

Welcome to the Teitho Contest, where you can participate with a variety of other writers and artists and send in stories and pictures based on our themes.

Join us in this writing and drawing contest!

A new challenge is posted every month. On the first day of the challenge, we announce a new theme on this site. You then have two months to create your entry, which has to be finished when you send it in.

After the deadline of the contest, the voting period begins. Based on the number of entries, it lasts for two or more weeks. The winners are usually announced a day or two after the end of the voting. Teitho remains one of the last prompt-based, independent, Tolkien fan-fiction/fan art monthly contests. Full contest guidelines are here.

Our prompt this month is Legacy.

What impact do past events have on the present? What traits, ideals or beliefs impact an individual’s followers or descendants? What do we leave for those who come after?

Legacies can be both positive and negative, as we see in the house of Fëanor.

It can be steadfastness, as we see in Fingolfin and his descendants.

An individual can leave a legacy, but so can a community or an entire culture—what legacy did Numenor leave to those who escaped the destruction?

It could be a written legacy like the Red Book of Westmarch, started by Bilbo Baggins to recount his quest for Erebor, then added to over the years to become much more than a simple diary.

A legacy may also be an object, an item passed down from individual to individual: a bequest, a sword, a ring, a property, an oath.

What will you choose to explore using this prompt? We look forward to your stories and art this month!

Please submit by November 30, 2024 to teitho.contest@gmail.com

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!

Around the World and Web Archive

Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.

PhD Research on Writing Tolkien's Female Characters: Participants Needed

Rebecca Davis is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Swansea and University of Central Oklahoma. Rebecca's PhD research uses corpus linguistics to explore how fanfiction participants depict Tolkien’s female characters—specifically characters with little to no development by the Professor—in fanfiction.

  • Haleth
  • Eärien from The Rings of Power
  • Lothiriel of Dol Amroth
  • Aragorn and Arwen’s Daughters

If you write or read Tolkien fanfiction about any of these characters, I’d love to talk to you! I’m looking to gather 40 interviews as part of my PhD research into the depiction of Tolkien’s female characters in fanfiction. These recorded interviews will take place by Zoom and will take 30-45 minutes.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, please see the participant information sheet and fill out the consent form linked below and I will be in touch.

Participant Information Sheet

Participant Consent Form

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

Feast of Horns Week 2024

Feast of Horns is a week-long Tolkien-themed event on Tumblr that will take place from the 16th to the 22nd of April, 2024, using headcanons as prompts. All sorts of fanworks are welcome, from drabbles, one-shots, multi-chapter fics, fan art, headcanon, moodboards, and playlists.

Prompts

Day 1: The feast | The chase

Suggestions: How did the Ainur feel when the first chase was suggested? Why was it suggested? Who suggested it? Who were the first to take part?

Day 2: The king and queen | The master and mistress of Ceremonies

Suggestions: Manwë and Varda sometimes took part in both the feast and the chase. How did they hunt? Did they have any favorites to go after? As for the master and mistress of ceremonies, how did Oromë and Vána conduct themselves? Did they keep to the side, or did they partake in the chase as well?

Day 3: Symbols | Collars and Necklaces

Suggestions: Everyone settles on a symbol to separate the hunter from the hunted. Those who take on the role of the hunter wear horns on their brows and amidst their hair. Those who take on the role of the hunted wear horns affixed to necklaces and collars. How elaborate do they get? Are they paired off with other adornments as well? How do Aulë, and later on, elves such as Fëanor make them? Did Fëanor make them for his sons?

Day 4: The hunter and the hunted | Battle of wills

Suggestions: How did the hunters choose who they would go after? Did they chase alone, or did they join hands with others? And what happened after they caught their intended target? There were also times when the hunted pitched themselves against the hunters in a test of will and skill. How did it happen?

Day 5: New alliances | New companions

Suggestions: Elves and Ainur who would not usually see eye-to-eye, worked together. Some alliances lasted only for the duration of the chase. Others may have lasted for much longer. Then there were those who went to form new intimate bonds with those they would have never considered before. How would such things unfold?

Day 6: Decree | No force

Suggestions: The feast and the chase that came after proved to be a huge success, and Manwë himself agreed to make the festivities a regular event. He even went so far as to demand that no force be used on anyone participating. Is this decree honored, or is force used at any point? Do those who want to use force find ways to gain consent from a not-so-willing participant in order to shield themselves from accusations that could ruin them?

Day 7: Free form

Rules

  • This is an 18+ event, and works can and will include explicit/triggering themes such as non-consent and incest. Please do be mindful of any warnings given on any post.
  • Please respect the writings/art/edits of other contributors, their headcanon, and whomever they ship. If you do not like a particular piece of writing, drawing, or ship, then don’t engage.
  • Fanworks must not include minors.
  • No reposting of other people’s works without their explicit permission.
  • Any sort of bigoted behavior or the promotion of bigoted ideas (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) will not be welcomed.
  • Violation of these rules will result in you getting blocked.

FAQ

Mod: @a-world-of-whimsy-5

Silmarillion Epistolary Week 2024

Silmarillion Epistolary is a challenge dedicated to creating fanworks to tell the story of The Silmarillion in the style of an epistolary novel. Silmarillion Epistolary Week will run 15-21 April 2024.

An epistolary novel is where the story is told through letters, diary entries, or other types of documents. One of the most well-known epistolary novels is Dracula, another more modern example would be The Princess Diaries series. These books use different kinds of documents and communications between characters such as letters, telegrams, email, journals, instant messaging, or texting to tell a story in a nontraditional way.

The goal of Silmarillion Epistolary is to encourage fans to take the stories we know and tell them through different kinds of documents.

Prompts

Day 1: Daily Life, Customs

Day 2: Exploration, New Lands

Day 3: Family, Loyalty

Day 4: Friendship, Alliance

Day 5: Love, Creation

Day 6: Loss, Betrayal

Day 7: Remembrance, New Beginnings

These are suggestions to help generate ideas, but not required. If you don't like the prompts for the day please feel free to create something else!

Rules

Be kind and courteous to others. Disrespect or harassment won't be tolerated.

Entries must be in epistolary format of some kind. There are a lot of possibilities, so be creative!

Prompts are suggestions to help generate ideas, but you're not required to use them.

Tag entries as #silmarillionepistolary or @silmarillionepistolary so that they can be reblogged! If you think your post may have been missed please reach out to let us know!

Please tag NSFW entries so that they can be reblogged here with the appropriate tag.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

April 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.

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. The Call for Activities will open later in the year.

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.

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!

Tolkienshortfanworks challenge for April

The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for April has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: bread; the formal challenge is: bredlik poem. Although this month the prompts have been clearly conceived as a pair,   they can be filled separately, as usual, and also combined with other challenges, such as SWG challenges.

New participants welcome.

More details about the challenge at the linked post.

Barduil Month 2024

Barduil Month 2023 celebrates the pairing Bard the Bowman/Thranduil Oropherion from The Hobbit. This year we're running four themed weeks in April on Tumblr and AO3, each with a set of five prompts, and we'll be posting the prompts in the next couple of days. In the meantime, please see our updated FAQs and get ready to flail about our lovely bi widower dads all over again!

Week 1, Monday 1 to Sunday 7 April: First Meetings
different first meeting | differences and similarities | Battle of the Five Armies | first impressions | uneasy allies

Week 2, Monday 8 to Sunday 14 April: Getting Together
overcoming differences | finding common ground | diplomatic incidents | first date | introducing the family

Week 3, Monday 15 to Sunday 21 April: Established Relationship
blended family | anniversaries | parties, festivals and holidays | downtime, time to relax, days off | family traditions

Week 4, Monday 22 to Sunday 28 April: Endings (happy or otherwise)
happily ever after | loss and grief | hope and despair | reunions and reincarnation | memories

As always, any kind of fan creation is welcomed and encouraged, whether that's fic, art, crafts, meta, or anything else. The AO3 collection is here if you want to post there too. We just ask that you stick to our rules of conduct, tag us in your posts and enjoy yourselves!

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

Tolkien Oxford 50 Presentations Available

The aim of the conference was to exhibit and reflect on the range of different approaches, methodologies, and backgrounds with which Tolkien has been studied in the past 50 years, which reflects the complexity of his personality, the richness of his creative work and the breadth of his reception. In an (academic) world ever more divided into different political and social bubbles, Tolkien had provided an exceptional meeting place, for very different people united by a common interest. Just as in the ancestral music of the Ainur, the conference aimed to be a polyphonic event, in which different scholarly endeavours can come together in a moment of shared reflection and celebration.

Recordings of most talks are available here.

Presenters included:

John Garth (Author and Journalist): “An Entirely Vain and False Approach”: Literary Biography and why Tolkien was Wrong about It

Michael Ward (University of Oxford): Tolkien’s Faith in Fact and Fiction

Hamish Williams (University of Groningen): Classical Ideas in Tolkien

Lukasz Neubauer (University of Koszalin): Beowulf, Maldon and All That: A Tangled Web of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon Scholarship and Fiction

Grace Khuri (Oriel College, University of Oxford): Kipling’s Medievalism and Tolkien’s Book of Lost Tales: Historicizing Myth and Mythologizing History in the Early 20th Century

Holly Ordway (Word on Fire Institute/Houston Christian University): Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Past Perspectives, Present Insights, Future Study

Yoko Hemmi (Keio University): Tolkien, “British” identity, and the Celtic studies

Michaël Devaux (Université de Caen Normandie): Tolkien's Textual Variants and the Authorial Status

Simon Horobin (Magdalen College, University of Oxford): ‘Never Trust a Philologist’: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Place of Philology in English Studies

Giuseppe Pezzini (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford): ‘Not about Anything but Itself’: Tolkien’s Language Invention and Literary Theory

Fëanorian Week 2024

Fëanorian Week will run March 25th, 2024-March 31st, 2024. The prompts are as followed:

  • Day 1- Maedhros - > Childhood, Kingship, Angband, Coping, The Union, Relations with Different Races
  • Day 2- Maglor -> Childhood, Wife,  Music & Songs of Power, Elrond & Elros, Kingship, Maglor’s  Gap, Redemption
  • Day 3- Celegorm - > Childhood, Hunting, Orome & Huan, Strength & Beauty, Luthien, Nargothrond
  • Day 4- Caranthir - > Childhood, Wife, Betrayal, Lordship, Dwarves & Humans, Marriage, Appearance
  • Day 5- Curufin - > Childhood, Wife Celebrimbor, Forge Work
  • Day 6- Ambarussa - > Childhood, Lordship, Regrets, Twin, Hunting, Nandor
  • Day 7- Nerdanel and Feanor-> Mahtan, Finwe & Indis, Marriage, Reunion, Traveling, Creation, Healing

Rules: You are allowed to post anything fanrelated on the days.  If the prompts are not to your liking, you can do your own thing.  The tracktag is #feanorianweek.  Tag your work accordingly!  Have fun and be nice to others. Disrespect towards others will not be tolerated.