One of our favorite parts of our challenges is awarding the little postage stamps that we give out to challenge participants. There is just something delightful about an online hoard of brightly colored prizes that are worth absolutely nothing but their commemoration of creativity or interaction with another creator.

For the past two years, we've been asking artists to help us in making these stamps. Doing so lets each month have a unique style or approach and, we hope, draws some attention to the stunning work the artists on our site are doing!

If you would like to help with creating stamps for the 2025 challenges, it is that time of the year! You can reply to this email or contact the mods through any of our usual channels. Next week, we will share a sign-up document with bare-bones descriptions of the 2025 challenges. (Note that if you want to be completely unspoiled about the challenges, you should probably not volunteer for this one!) Our call for stamp creators has more information, and note that all creators are welcome to volunteer. There is no level of expertise in art required.

In addition to our ongoing Potluck Bingo challenge, the SWG is really happy to be able to provide a home for the Festival of Lights Fest this year. This Hanukkah-inspired event runs annually and encourages works about or inspired by Hanukkah. Fanworks might directly depict Hanukkah (e.g., a modern AU with Jewish characters), might relate to Hanukkah (such as an in-universe celebration similar to Hanukkah), or might just be inspired by our Hanukkah prompts. Because the Festival of Lights Fest runs alongside Potluck Bingo this year, FLF mods Indy and Janeways have added two Hanukkah-themed bingo cards to the collection—and yes, you get stamps for Potluck and Festival of Lights Fest if you complete a prompt on one of the Hanukkah cards!

Finally, Tolkien Meta Week begins in just over a week! Yes, this might be timed because we also have an open call for meta/scholarship for our 2025 Mereth Aderthad event ... but more broadly, Tolkien fans are brilliant people who tend to underestimate their brilliance, and both Tolkien Meta Week and Mereth Aderthad are intended to encourage all of you out there to shine! Tolkien Meta Week includes optional daily prompts, but really? We just hope people will become more comfortable sharing their ideas about Tolkien! Note that while Meta Week on the SWG archive follows the usual rules for what is eligible as a "Silmwork" for the SWG, we are also running this event on Tumblr and would love to reblog any Tolkien meta, whether it is eligible for our site or not! Make sure to tag #tolkien meta week and we'll do the rest.

And a brief erratum from last week: In a rush to get out the door to a work conference, I forgot to include Anérea and Varda delle Stelle's Mapping Arda, Part III: The Second Age as a featured article in the newsletter. If you haven't checked out their exploration of Second Age maps and geography, it is well worth the read and is linked below!

The cartography of Middle-earth is one of its many fascinating details for many fans. How many of us turn regularly to the maps inside The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit as we read? Have you ever looked at those maps and wondered at the places on them that are barely or never mentioned? Or wondered what lay beyond the map's edge? Maps suggest stories beyond the roads we've been allowed to follow alongside familiar characters, making them a perfect inspiration for fanworks.

This week, Anérea returns with our periodic Tolkien art column, Tolkien Fanartics, and her series within that column about mapping Arda. In the third installment in that series, she looks at maps of the Second Age.

As Silmarillion readers can tell you, the Second Age is a frayed patchwork between the more complete stories of the First and Third Ages. Cartographically, the Second Age is no different. Maps of Númenor and mainland Middle-earth during the Second Age are fragmentary, leaving the artists who work with them to draw on their full array of cartographic skills, close reading, and a dash of speculation. The maps Anérea has selected for this week's article show various ways of viewing the lands of the Second Age and depict these lands in a variety of forms, from the more traditional drawing and digital art, to embroidery, to three-dimensional models.

You can read Anérea's article, "Mapping Arda, Part III: The Second Age" here.

A couple weeks ago, we announced that we were looking for bingo cards of prompts for our upcoming Potluck Bingo challenge. That challenge is now live, and you can sample the five-star offerings of prompts, beautifully crafted and served on an array of bingo cards!

We generally run one bingo card challenge each year (after the uproarious success of Back to Middle-earth Month 2012, which the SWG mods who lived through it still regard with a mixture of awe and trauma—trawema, if you will), so if you want to create a fanwork or write a comment for this challenge (and we hope you do), then a quick rundown of how bingo card challenges work is in order. We are not calling numbers for this challenge; you can create for any prompt you want on any card you want. If you made a card, you are under no obligation to play it, or you can go wild on your own prompts. You can combine multiple prompts into a single fanwork (from the same card or different cards). The various ways that prompts combine is part of the fun of bingo challenges!

Of course, if you've played actual bingo in a drafty church hall with blue-haired old ladies and their array of lucky charms and fierce combativeness, you know how rabid bingo aficionados can be about winning bingo. Our challenges don't expect you to fill lines, but we of course welcome you to try! There are special stamps available for participants who do. Let a mod know if you've achieved bingo, which we define as filling prompts in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines or (for the truly ambitious!) all prompts on a card. There is also a special stamp for players who play multiple boards.

As always, all types of fanwork are welcome on our archive. (If you're new to our challenges, find our challenge guidelines here.) We also have bingo boards for leaving comments, and we are accepting new cards for the duration of the challenge. The Potluck Bingo page has guidelines and templates for making cards.

This challenge runs through January 15, 2025, but because the first challenge of the new year is always an amnesty challenge where you can create for any of our 2024 challenges you missed and receive the stamps, you will have until February 15, 2025, to post responses to this challenge and receive stamps.

In other challenge-related news, we had several members collaborate to solve the Orctober riddle for last month's challenge. I've set up the form for requesting riddle clues to email me when there are new requests, so if you haven't solved it yet (or even started!) but want to try, feel free to keep sending clue requests.

And a few other reminders: Tolkien Meta Week begins December 8, and we are still accepting proposals for presentations at our July 19 Mereth Aderthad hybrid event!

As we approach our twentieth birthday, we have become a group that does a lot. We hold online events, including our monthly challenges, publish articles and a weekly newsletter, maintain an SWG presence on three social media sites, and of course keep an archive that welcomes all types of fanworks about The Silmarillion. Enter the semi-regular reminder that none of this stuff does itself and that our team of volunteers is what keeps it happening!

If you enjoy the SWG and want to show your appreciation, one of the best ways is by getting involved as a volunteer. We don't collect donations but do rely on people-power to keep the group running.

Our volunteers page contains an up-to-date listing of roles we're currently looking for. In addition, with our Mereth Aderthad hybrid event coming up next July, we're looking for volunteers willing to help plan the event and at the event itself. If you're interested, hit REPLY here and we'll get you started!

Volunteer roles vary as to whether they are long-term (such as the Around the World and Web editor role that's been open for almost three years now!) or one-off (such as writing an article for the newsletter). Time commitments vary also, but important to know that we understand that our volunteers have lives, families, jobs, school, and community commitments that need to take priority. Our volunteers are backed by a moderator team (also volunteers!) who are able to step in to cover or assist when volunteers need time off.

Finally, a thank you to our current volunteers: our moderators Russandol, Grundy, Lyra, Suzelle, Janeways, and Angelica. Shadow manages our social media accounts (which is my least favorite things to do, so I send out waves of gratitude each week at least when posts appear as though by magic). Our art editors are Anérea and Varda delle Stelle, and they ensure that each article for the newsletter has a gorgeous work of art to go with it. Newsletter writers within the past year(ish ... because I like to acknowledge people!) have been Simon J. Cook, Anérea, Melesta, LadySternchen, Cuarthol, Rhunedhel, Himring, and firstamazon. This year's challenge banner artists are Grundy, Cuarthol, Independence1776, and Zdenka. Istari for our Discord server are firstamazon and Nienna. Inclusivity committee members, who help us navigate some of the toughest and most important questions we face so that all people feel welcome and wanted here, are Independence1776, Shadow, Elwin Fortuna, and UnnamedElement. And our Mereth Aderthad planners are Quente, Aprilertuile, Shadow, Gryph, Independence1776, and Zhie.

If anyone is left off, it is purely an oversight on my part! Please let me know so that I can write a correction for a later edition of the newsletter.

And again, if you'd like to join this group of much-appreciated volunteers, check out our volunteers page or click REPLY and let us know!

Many times, when meta fanworks—that is, nonfiction about Tolkien, written by fans—come under discussion, I hear people say things like, "That's not for me. I'm not academic!"

The thing is, you don't have to be academic to create meta. If the idea of producing a lengthy, polished, and meticulously cited essay about Tolkien does nothing for you (or fills you with terror), you are not alone. Meta, though, is much more than essays and articles: It is any form of nonfiction work about Tolkien. That messy document where you keep every mention of a favorite character or theme? Meta. The meme about two characters' relationship? Meta. The lists we make on Tumblr or reflections on how Tolkien and fandom influenced our lives or wild headcanons that form the foundation of our fanworks? Also meta.

This December, the SWG will be hosting a Tolkien Meta Week around this idea that meta is for everyone, a notion that is also at the foundation of our summer hybrid event Mereth Aderthad 2025. Fans bring brilliant insights on Tolkien all of the time—insights that often aren't being considered by the academics writing those long, meticulous essays. We hope that Tolkien Meta Week will inspire some ideas worth sharing at Mereth Aderthad!

Each day during Tolkien Meta Week, we will offer four prompts that we hope inspire ideas and push the boundaries of what many creators consider meta. These prompts are optional, and any meta fanwork is welcome for the event. While our archive is a Silmarillion-only archive, we will reblog any and all meta created for Tolkien Meta Week on our tumblr, @silmarillionwritersguild.

To see the prompts, full guidelines, and prompt definitions, see our Tolkien Meta Week page and watch our social media for updates next week!

Part of what makes Tolkien's world so enduring and appealing (and ripe for fanworks-creating) is that it hints at unlimited stories beyond the perspectives we are given. Fanworks creators have used their work to foreground perspectives neglected in the original texts or to challenge the points of view of the narrators of the legendarium.

This month's challenge, Orctober, begins from this premise. To be clear, you don't have to take alternate perspectives, discuss Orcs or resistance or rebellion, or create a fanwork that is dark and spooky. For our challenges, you can always make any kind of Silmarillion fanwork that you want. However, the premise of the challenge originates from the idea that the Free People of Middle-earth observed the "servants of Melkor" and sometimes switched sides to serve Melkor themselves. Even though the texts don't document it, the opposite happened surely as well, and Orcs (and other "servants") observed Elves, Mortals, Dwarves, and others and decided that they also wanted a different, better life for themselves. Wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. Cuarthol's recent themed collection Orcs Are People includes fanworks and scholarship that engage with some of these ideas.

This month's challenge has two components. As a challenge, prompts come from an old parchment map made by Orcs that shows locations where an Orc seeking freedom can find protection, shelter, or objects useful to resistance. Each location has a spooky-themed prompt, an icon on the map (since Melkor, like most oppressors, likely did not encourage his "servants" to learn and read), a small storyline about the location's importance to Orcish freedom, and of course the location itself. You can use any of these elements to craft a fanwork.

The second part is an optional puzzle to solve. There is one place in Middle-earth where Orcs have established a home where they can be truly safe and free. Will you be able to find this place? For each prompt you complete, there is a clue that leads to its discovery. Once you complete prompts, request your clues here. (Note that collaboration is allowed and encourage!) If you think you've solved the puzzle, email the mods—you can reply to this email to reach us!

Complete guidelines for Orctober are here. And if you're new to our challenges (welcome!) and looking to get started, SWG challenge guidelines are here.

If you study Beowulf in academia (as I once did), you will encounter Tolkien in the form of a 1936 lecture-turned-essay called "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Tolkien fans sometimes know it too, as its importance in Beowulf scholarship means it is more readily available than a lot of Tolkien's academic work, but lacking an immediate connection to the legendarium—such as found in his other lecture-turned-essay "On Fairy-stories"—it isn't engaged with in fandom as regularly as "On Fairy-stories" is. In the world of Beowulf scholarship, "Monsters and the Critics" is still widely considered to be the most important scholarship on Beowulf, as it is credited with producing a sea change in how scholars read and engaged with the poem.

In his final essay in his series on "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," Simon J. Cook challenges the idea that "Monsters and the Critics" is not as deeply entwined with the Ardaverse. In June 2023, Simon first approached the SWG about hosting this series about a new reading of "Monsters and the Critics" as part of our A Sense of History column. Since then, he has produced monthly columns, looking at the tower allegory in the essay from a variety of angles, often tying his revelations back to the legendarium in new and intriguing ways. This final essay pans out to take in the whole picture, concluding with a reading of the analogy that is new and fresh from how it has been interpreted both by Tolkien and Beowulf scholars in the past. By using Tolkien's allegories of the tower and the rock garden, Simon creates a metaphorical map for how the various elements of both Beowulf and the legendarium are both physically and symbolically situated.

You can read Simon's final essay in this series, "Doom and Ascent: The Argument of ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’," here.

Intially, due to a variety of piling-up small circumstances, I did not think that Simon's essay would be ready for this edition of the newsletter. (In fact, if the newsletter seems a bit later arriving than usual, it is, so that I could get Simon's essay into it in time!) This edition was going to simply mention that we've opened up the call for presenters for meta, research, and scholarship for Mereth Aderthad 2025.

But I find that Simon's essay (a work of scholarship that challenges "established wisdom" and is published on a website with a predominantly fannish purpose) is the perfect illustration of what we are hoping to achieve with the Mereth Aderthad, in honor of twenty years of the SWG's existence.

The core concept of Mereth Aderthad is to hold a day-long hybrid event that engages with both scholarly and creative works about Tolkien's legendarium, ideally in conversation with each other. We the organizers hope that this illustrates what the SWG has evolved to become: predominantly a fanworks website and community but one that also engages significantly with meta, research, and scholarship about the legendarium.

Our hope is that this doesn't result in scholars and academics on one side of the room, presenting their work, and fans on the other, presenting theirs. There is significant overlap, and with the call for presenters released, we hope to convince at least a few people who don't think of themselves as scholars that their meta and research matters enough to share with others at this event. (And maybe we can convince a few from the scholarly side to try their hands at fanworks!)

Ultimately, a core belief that drives the work we do on the SWG is the value of the work that fans do about the legendarium. That is stories and art and every type of fanwork imaginable, but it is also the considerable amount of research and thinking about the legendarium that fans do: in preparing to create fanworks, in conversing with each other, and as meta fanworks.

Because I engage with both the Tolkien fandom and the Tolkien scholarly community, I know that fans bring perspectives that academics often don't. And, as Simon's series illustrates, fans and fandom spaces can push against established wisdom in a way that is more dangerous for someone whose meta is also how they keep a roof over their head.

Many of you have done incredible research and meta work and have important things to say. In the months to come, we will hold events and workshops to support fans who want to present their meta and research work, and I hope you will consider submitting a proposal if you create these kinds of fanworks! The full call for presenters for meta, research, and scholarship can be found here.

Scholars who study fanworks identify the form as especially suited for recentering the stories of people and groups who are often marginalized and ignored in mainstream media. If there was a mainstream media of Middle-earth, possibly the group most marginalized—if not outright maligned—would be the Orcs.

Within the texts of the legendarium themselves, there is little positive to say about Orcs, who most often appear as herd-like evil pawns, showing little capacity for independent thought or empathy. Indeed, taking the legendarium at face value, Orcs scarcely seem human. In the newest addition to the Themed Collections series, Cuarthol presents ten works of fiction, art, and scholarship that challenge this perception and proceed from a simple but radical stance: Orcs are people.

Of course, the idea that Orcs are people is in fact far from radical. Our real-world history is littered with examples of historiography that seek to dehumanize a group for purposes of propaganda, and the legendarium—written as it is from the points of view of Elves and Men—would be no different. But as the works Cuarthol selected show, considering the lives and perspectives of Orcish characters opens corners of the legendarium that many have not thought about, much less explored, expanding the edges of the legendarium into new lands and points of view.

You can find Cuarthol's collection "Orcs Are People" here. Our themed collections are viewed as a starting point for exploring fanworks centered around a topic, so we encourage adding your own favorite fanworks that seek to (re)humanize Orcs as a comment on the collection. And remember we are always looking for new themed collections; find out more about how to share a collection of fanworks on your favorite character, pairing, genre, or topic here!

While Tolkien was widely read, his primary interests—both professionally and in terms of his own aesthetic preferences—lay in the traditions of northern Europe, especially the Germanic traditions. Many of these cultures used alliteration (as well as a complex metrical system) as the dominant feature of their poetry. This included the Anglo-Saxons of England. After the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, poetic traditions began to shift to favor rhymed poems with the bouncing meters that we often think of as English-language poetry today. Yet there were some holdouts, and some scholars see these late English alliterative poems as a potential political statement, holding fast to the original English Germanic culture over the invading French traditions. Tolkien, as we know, once sought likewise to capture that same misty past as his "mythology for England": what we today know as Middle-earth.

It is no surprise, then, that Tolkien also enjoyed alliterative poetry. Some of his favorite poems—Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—were alliterative. He translated alliterative poems and wrote original alliterative verse. Fanworks creators following in Tolkien's tradition have followed suit, crafting alliterative poems about the legendarium.

This month, as part of our Themed Collection series, Paul D. Deane has assembled a collection of alliterative poems about Tolkien's world. Paul is the editor of Forgotten Ground Regained, the definitive source of Modern English alliterative poetry online, which publishes a quarterly journal of alliterative verse. (Poets, take note—they take submissions!) The site includes a substantial section on poems based on science fiction and fantasy, including Tolkien. Paul was kind enough to select ten legendarium-inspired poems to introduce readers to alliterative verse based on Tolkien. As always, we want to hear your favorites as a comment on the collection.

You can check out Paul's collection, "Alliterative Verse for Arda," here.

Paul's is the second of our new Themed Collections column. (If you missed Himring's collection on the ruling queens of Númenor, find it here!) We are looking for other collections of fanworks and other content related to Tolkien. These curated collections can be as ridiculously broad or as ridiculously specific as you would like. (Something less ridiculous and in the middle is welcome too, of course.) Characters, character groups, pairings, genres, formats, tropes, themes, ages, events, and a thousand approaches we haven't even thought of—if you'd like to put together a themed collection, find the call for contributors here.

Finally, we had big news last week that we will be hosting a hybrid event on July 19, 2025 to celebrate our twentieth birthday. We will gather for a day (with optional social events on either side for those who can attend in person) to share research and scholarship about Tolkien and fanworks that address similar topics. Mark your calendar! If you'd like to volunteer to help make this event happen, reply to this email.