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Oxford 50th Commemoration Seminar Podcasts

Recordings from the Tolkien 50th Commemoration seminar series at Oxford University now available as podcasts! From the Fantasy Literature podcast page, which includes the seminar recordings:

Fantasy Literature has emerged as one of the most important genres over the past few decades and now enjoys extraordinary levels of popularity. The impact of Tolkien’s Middle-earth works and the serialisation of George Martin’s ‘Game of Thrones’ books has moved these and their contemporaries into mainstream culture. As the popularity grows so does interest in the roots of fantasy, the main writers and themes, and how to approach these texts.

Oxford is a natural home to fantasy literature with those who worked or studied here having written so many famous and influential texts (e.g. Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson), C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and Philip Pullman to name but a few) – leading to the notion of an ‘Oxford School of Fantasy’. These lectures, short talks, and interviews seek to take listeners into these works and these writers and beyond.

Thanks to Himring for the find!

Femslash February 2024

Fem!slash February is the perfect opportunity to bring to life your fave F/F pairing from the Tolkien fandom. 

Yes, this includes OCs and even Fem versions of pairings (for example, Fem! Bagginshield)! Additionally, this is a trans-inclusive space. If you want to write a transfemme character, we welcome it. This can include nonbinary or gender non-conforming characters in sapphic pairings! If you feel that a character is female or femme based on your definition, it counts.  

How to participate: 

We have selected six femslash pairs that some mentioned as their favorite femslash ship! We also included a free space for any other wonderful femslash ships you like. If you only want to do free space fics for this event, no problem!  

Just remember to:

• Tag @tolkienpinupcalendar
• Use the tag #tpcfemslashfeb
• And send the link to our smut-mission page

If you want, you can also add (fic or art) your creation to our AO3 Collection!

Also, note that this is not only writing prompts. If you want to draw, moodboard, playlist etc. for the prompts, feel free to!!

We are so looking forward to reading all the queerness.

Prompts

• Arwen/Éowyn
• Galadriel/Melian
• Sigrid/Tauriel
• Fem!Ecthelion/Dís
• Lúthien/Thuri
• Nerdanel/Indis
• Free Space

International Fanworks Day 2024

Time flies! We’re already celebrating the tenth anniversary of International Fanworks Day (IFD) here at the Organization for Transformative Works.

Every February 15th, on the day when, ten years ago, AO3 celebrated its millionth published fanwork, fandom gathers to celebrate IFD and fanworks in all their forms—fics, art, vids, zines, meta, and more—and their importance in and across fannish communities all over the world.

We would love to hear about your experience in fandom—as a fan, as a creator, as a member of the community. The running theme for this IFD is 10: give us your ten things that mean the most to you about fandom, share with us a highlight about the past ten years you’ve spent in fandom, or, if you’re feeling nostalgic, tell us about ten funny, exciting or noteworthy moments that happened in your fandoms.

We are going to keep an eye out for the stories shared by fans, so tag your posts with #IFD2024 and we’ll signal boost those stories on the OTW News social media accounts.

In a few weeks we’ll be announcing what the OTW is doing to celebrate IFD 2024. But we also want to know what you and your fandom communities will be doing to celebrate the 10th year of this event! Back in December we asked you what your community was planning for this IFD: we’ll collect information and links to those events until January 28. We’ll then promote those events to our readership on both our website and socials along with our own event schedule, so make sure to share your celebrations!

We are really happy to share this milestone with you, and can’t wait to know what you’re doing to celebrate. We look forward to reading about what fandom and fanworks have meant to you!

Barduil Fic Rec February 2024

This February, we're going to celebrate by sharing the love for all the wonderful fics in the Barduil community! Use the Google form below to recommend as many of your favorite fics as you'd like, and we'll share them throughout the month of February -- and generate masterlists of recommended fics to share throughout the year!

If you have any questions, please send us an ask or message one of the mods.

Click here to recommend fics!

Gore Swap 2024

Goreswap is an exchange for stories and art that feature gore as a prominent element. Goreswap will run in 2024 with the following schedule:

Nominations: January 12-19
Sign ups: January 20-27
Assignments out by: January 30 (ideally earlier)
Works Due: Sunday March 10
Reveals: Friday March 22

All deadlines are 11:59 PM EST/EDT. Please note that daylight savings in this timezone begins the day of the deadline and check the counter!

Goreswap Rules
AO3 Collection
Tagset

WIP International Fanworks Day Mini Bang 2024

The WIP International Fanworks Day Mini Bang is an informal Mini Bang meant to finish stories between 500 and 7,499 words in time for International Fanworks Day.

Writing Starts- January 1st
Writing Ends- February 14th
Posting Begins- February 15th
Posting Ends- February 22nd

All times are by 8:59pm PST. Convert time zones.

Rules and FAQ

British Library: Twenty-First Century Tolkien with Nick Groom and Dimitra Fimi

J.R.R. Tolkien is a colossal figure in fantasy fiction: his visionary creation Middle-Earth and its inhabitants have captured the imagination of millions of people around the world. Its origins were closely interwoven with his own life experience and deep study of language and literature, but went on to be a cultural phenomenon, with adaptations including Peter Jackson’s blockbuster films of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and more recently the TV series The Rings of Power.

Nick Groom's book Twenty-First-Century; Tolkien What Middle-Earth Means To Us Today is an engaging and radical reinterpretation of the beloved author’s work. He is joined in conversation by Dimitra Fimi, author of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History. They are chaired by Adam Roberts, an award winning novelist, and historian of literature.

The lecture will run on 9 January 2024 at 7:30 PM GMT. You can view the lecture here.

Fellowship of the Fics: January Trope Roulette

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Now that we're in the new year, get ready to see some new changes to the FOTFICs blog that we're so excited to share. One thing that isn't changing, is our love for monthly events to help promote creativity!

Do you recognize this one from last year?

Welcome to January Trope Roulette! 

The goal is very simple - spin the roulette wheel (link below) twice and whatever AU/Trope(s) you get, write something (drabble, one shot, 100k+ novel, etc) featuring the two mashed together (If you get the same one twice, spin again.)

This is to encourage exploration into other tropes/situations that maybe we as writers never considered before, and can work as a great writing exercise to get you going for the day!

Be sure to tag #fotfics so we can see what amazing works you guys come up with!

→ January Trope Roulette Wheel

Bonus: let your followers spin the wheel and send in the fun combinations they get!

Purim Gifts 2024

Purim Gifts is an annual all-fandoms-welcome exchange for fanfic and/or podfic (participant's choice) with a side helping of art, focused on characters who are at least one of: women, Jewish, or persecuted by evil viziers.

Purim Gifts celebrates the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates one smart orphan-girl saving her people from genocide (plotted by the king's vizier) and becoming a queen while she's at it. You totes don't have to be Jewish to participate!

2024 Schedule:

SIGNUPS & NOMINATIONS - Fri-Fri 5-12 Jan (anywhere in the world) DEADLINE - Fri 15 March (anywhere in the world) REVEALS - Sat-Mon 23-25 March

Got more questions? You can:

1. Send us an ask
2. Join our Discord server (fresh link posted weekly until signups end)
3. Email us at purim_gifts@yahoo.com

January 2024 Call for Papers

Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies: Magic System as the Key Element in Fantasy Worldbuilding

This conference is hosted online on 25th –26th January at 11am (+2 GMT) by the Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

How does one choose a magic system for a fantasy world? How do we employ magic to build a dialogue with reality? Fantasy fiction is brimming with magic systems ranging from ritual magic to elemental, from dominating and manipulative magic to the one that is shaped by a dialogue between equals. A magic system in fantasy literature can be defined as a conglomeration of magic sources, manifestations, practices and implements that interact with one another and the environment and are employed by magic users to produce an impact on the world at various levels or to create an illusion of such an impact in accordance with the in-universe laws. You are invited to participate in a conversation about the principles of magic system modelling and functioning in fantasy fiction. Issues to be discussed include but are not limited to:

• Magic systems in fantasy short stories / novels / series / worlds;
• Magic systems typology within one world or at the metagenre level;
• Magic systems in action: sources, mechanisms, implementations, potentials and limitations;
• Magic systems as a space for creative experiments and collaboration between
• the author and the reader. Magic systems and fandoms;
• Magic system analysis through the prism of poetics, genre, narrative theory, etc;
• Correlation of fantasy magic systems with contemporary social, psychological, political concerns (gender, postcolonial, environmental studies, etc.).

Proposals are accepted till 10th January 2024.

To submit a proposal, please fill in the form.

Languages: English and Ukrainian

25-minute presentations will be followed by 5-minute discussions

Tolkien at UVM 2023: The Psychologies of Middle-earth

This hybrid conference will be held 13 April 2024 at the University of Vermont.

This is our 20th annual conference. The theme is The Psychologies of Middle-earth. We are excited to have Dr Sara Brown as our keynote!

Please submit abstracts (150 words) to Dr. Chris Vaccaro (at cvaccaro@uvm.edu) by the deadline of January 15th 2024. The registration fee is $25 and covers breakfast and lunch and helps to pay for our tech support for the virtual modality.

Abstracts can cover various applications of psychology including myth, religion, art, sexuality, world building, race and ethnicity, feminism, queer theory, class consciousness, ideology, PTSD, trauma, desire, disability, and much more.

Proposals Due: January 15, 2024

Note that SWG members often attend this conference! Message Dawn if you are thinking of attending and want to meet up.

Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien's Romantic Resonances

We are now calling for papers for the Tolkien Society 2024 seminar, on the theme Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances, which will be a hybrid event held online and in-person at the Hilton Hotel, Leeds on 6th July 2024.

This seminar seeks fresh and innovative readings of Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances that are in dialogue with modern scholarship on Romanticisms, Romantic aesthetics and Romantic-period histories. The seminar understands ‘Romanticism’ and the ‘Romantic’ as complex, nuanced terms that elude simplification, traditional historical markers, and solely Anglocentric readings. We welcome proposals that address the broader application of the terms.

Proposals should be no more than 300 words and biographies no more than 100 words. An additional box has been provided for proposed bibliographies if you wish to include one. The deadline for the call for papers is end of day Thursday 29th February 2024. Paper proposals should be submitted here.

Find the full call for papers here.

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.

Mythmoot X: Homeward Bound

This hybrid conference will be held 22-25 June 2024 at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia.

Mythmoot annual conference brings together students, fans, staff, and friends of Signum University, the Mythgard Institute, Signum SPACE, and Signum Academy. Our online and in-person completely hybrid event combines the best of scholarship and friendship in four glorious days.

The call for papers for this conference has not been posted yet. The conference webpage is here.

Signum University Regional Moots

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

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