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Gondolin Week 2023

What the Book of Lost Tales tells us about Tarnin Austa is that a feast - so named the "Gates of Summer" took place on the eve of the first of Lairë. Following which a ceremony began at midnight, during with the Gondothlim spoke not a word until the rise of the Anor at daybreak.

At dawn, the people would burst into song, with choirs leading them from the eastern wall, as the sun shone brightly upon lamps and lights of colour which were hung on new-leaved trees.

Our intention with this year's Gondolin Week is to honour those roots. As such, our themes this year will consist of these and other festival activities.

Therefore, as always, each day of our event will include a list of prompts including: the ceremony/activity taking place, as well as a suggested location and character(s).

Theme List:
- Feast
- Ceremony
- Songs
- Dance
- Theatre
- Parade
- Undetermined

Gondolin Week will run 14-20 May 2023 on Tumblr, with an AO3 collection.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang: 2023 Schedule

The complete schedule with explanations of each schedule item can be found here.

May 8 – Artist Sign-up Deadline
May 12 – Discord Server Opens
May 14 – Art Draft Due
May 19 – Art Preview Opens
May 20-21 Discord Art Talks
May 21 – Author Signups Deadline
May 27 – CLAIMS – 17:00 UTC
June 2 – Post-Claims Check-in
June 11 – Free Rein Art Due
June 23 – Check-in #2
July 28 – Check-in #3
August 6 – Final Art Due
August 13 – Final Check-in (#4)
August 25 – Art Can Be Posted
TBA – Discord Art Reveals Event
September 1 – Final Fic Due In Collection
September 8 – REVEALS
September 11 – Staggered Tumblr Reblogs
September 20 – Gallery Submissions Open
September 30 – Discord Server Closes

May challenge at tolkienshortfanworks (Dreamwidth)

The May Challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. 

The thematic challenge is: taxes, tolls, or similar charges.

The formal challenge is to include an extract from an account book of some sort (or even make the whole piece an extract from an account book).



If you don't want to deal with questions of currency in your setting, remember that payment can historically also be made in weight of precious metals, in kind (for example, specified amounts of grain, fish, meat, eggs, etc.), or in specified services (for example, one day's ploughing).



But we know coins were used in Gondor, in the Shire, and elsewhere, by the Third Age at the latest.

The Gondorian denominations were Castar (Sindarin mirian, plural miriain) and Tharni (Sindarin canath, plural cenaith), for a coin worth a quarter of a Castar.

More details on the tolkienshortfanworks monthly challenges at the linked post.

New participants are always welcome.

"Tolkien and Diversity" Tolkien Society Seminar Proceedings Available for Preorder

Welcoming over seven hundred delegates across the two-day event, the 2021 Tolkien Society summer seminar was the highest attended event in the Society's history. It invited scholars to consider the role that diversity plays in Middle-earth's linguistic and literary make-up: how does he explore race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, religion and faith, and age? How do different fandoms receive his works? How can varying perspectives enrich our understanding of Arda? Tolkien and Diversity was the second of three seminars that the Tolkien Society hosted online in 2021, reaching over 1,600 global delegates.

Published under the auspices of the Society's Peter Roe Memorial Fund, this proceedings features a collection of papers delivered at the Tolkien Society 2021 summer seminar. The volume will be available on May 16 but can be preordered on the Luna Press website.

Angbang Week 2023

Angbang Week 2023 will run May 1st - May 7th on Tumblr.

Similarly to last year, we will be accepting any and all original creations for the upcoming event - visual, written or auditory, which is including but not limited to fanfiction, poetry, art both traditional and digital, playlists, moodboards, etc. So long as they’re on topic, new, and created by you, we want to see, appreciate and feature them.

Every day has a couple of prompts to choose from, for which you could create a piece of content you see fit to associate with the prompt you chose. You can pick one, do both separately or simultaneously, or even skip both altogether if you don’t feel like those particular day’s prompts are for you. This year's prompts are as follows:

Day 1 - May 1st: Ainulindalë | The timeless Halls
Day 2 - May 2nd: The spring of Arda | The marring of Arda
Day 3 - May 3rd: Ice | Snow
Day 4 - May 4th: The Void | The flame imperishable
Day 5 - May 5th: Dagor Bragollach |  Nirnaeth Arnoediad
Day 6 - May 6th: Temples | Sacrifice
Day 7 - May 7th: Alternative Universe(s)

When posting your works, feel free to post them on the day the prompt is from or later, but refrain from posting earlier if possible. (For example, please avoid posting Day 7 content on Day 1.) There’s no time limit, so don’t stress out if you’re posting something a few days “too late”. We will be reblogging and featuring your content even after the 7th of May, so there is no need to worry.

When posting, please mention the day number and the prompt you chose for more convenient tagging. Tag any posts intended for the event with either #Angbangweek2023, #Angbang Week 2023, or tag us directly and we will feature as many works created for the event as we can find on Tumblr.

If you have any questions regarding the prompts, the event, or the tagging, don’t be afraid to ask us for clarification anytime! And finally, feel free to start planning and making your content early, if you feel like it.

Digital Tolkien Project Discord

The Digital Tolkien Project, in their own words, is "A scholarly project focused on Tolkien from both a corpus linguistic and digital humanities perspective." In other words, if you like using tech and spreadsheets and the like to gather information on Tolkien, this is probably a place you'd like to be.

The DTP has set up a Discord server for working on their various projects and issued an open invite. Click the link above to join.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang: 2023 Sign-Ups Open

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.

Sign-ups for the 2023 TRSB are now open!

Schedule

May 8: Artist sign-up deadline
May 14: Art draft due
May 19: Art preview gallery available to signed-up authors
May 27 (17:00 UTC): Claims (find this in your timezone)

Important Sign-Up Information

Artists, sign up with the handle you use on your primary platform (e.g. DeviantArt, Instagram, Tumblr etc.).

Authors must have an AO3 account to participate and should sign up with their AO3 username. This is to make it easier for us to track who has and hasn’t put their finished fic in the collection. (If you don’t have an account as at signups, don’t panic – just make sure you join their waiting list in plenty of time.)

NB – in the past we have had difficulty getting hold of people because they’ve signed up with an alias that bears no resemblance to any of their fandom handles, and/or an email that they barely use. Don’t do this, please; make sure you are actually contactable. If for some reason you can’t sign up with your username for one of the above platforms, get in touch with the mods in the first instance to discuss options.

Please add the event email (tolkienrsb@gmail.com) to your safe senders list to ensure that you get all the information you need from us – we promise not to spam you! This is also how you will receive your preview gallery access. Gallery access will be provided to all participants, but only signed up authors may claim. You will not get access to the preview gallery unless you sign up for the event.

Before signing up, make sure you read the TRSB FAQ!

Links

TRSB Website
Artist Sign-Ups
Author Sign-Ups
Pinch Hitter Sign-Ups
Beta Sign-Ups
Treat Sign-Ups

F3: Focus on Friendship and Family

F3 is an event to celebrate the friendships and families of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Second Age!

This includes all the movies (yes, all of them), The Rings of Power, LOTRO and other video games, board/card/tabletop and book games, and so on and so forth.

The event includes three phases: making prompt chains, creating based on prompt chains, and creating derivations. The event rules can be found at the links below.

Your creations must be set in the Second or Third Age and they must be rated for General Audiences.

Schedule

April 29: prompt creation closes
May 4: creator sign-ups close
June 15: creations due
June 30: derivations due

Links

Event Rules (summary version here)
Creator Sign-Up Form

Maple Moot: Northern Spirit (May 20)

Signum University and the Mythgard Institute invite you to join us on Saturday, May 20, 2023, for Maple Moot 2023: Northern Spirit. This hybrid event will take place at Hart House, at the University of Toronto, hosted by Signum and the U of T Tolkien Club.

Northern Spirit is an ancient virtue of some mythologies to which the father of modern fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien owes much of his creative inspiration. Join us for Signum’s first journey into the North (of the border that is), where we will explore the meaning of Northern Spirit, its thematic influence in Tolkien’s legendarium, and its origins in fantasy and literature.

Please submit your proposal for an academic paper, creative presentation, workshop, or discussion panel for Maple Moot ’23. The theme is “Northern Spirit”, and both on-site and online attendees are welcome to participate in presentation. The call for proposals will close on May 6th. If your presentation is chosen, we will reach out to let you know prior to publishing the event schedule. 

We would be delighted to receive proposals including stories and scholarship by First Nations people, about the relationship between land and language, and how our identity shapes and is shaped by legends. We welcome creative and artistic proposals alongside academic ones, please reach out if you have any questions about what is possible at this event!

Proposal Submission Form (open through May 6)
Register for the Event

Online Class: Tolkien's Time Travel Stories

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lost Road sends characters from his contemporary England back into the past of his Middle-earth. This class will feature J.R.R. Tolkien's two little-known, unfinished time-travel stories. The Lost Road sends characters from his contemporary England dreaming their way back into the storm-haunted past of Númenor. The Notion Club Papers brings the same storm into the present to blow through an Inklings-like gathering of Oxford dons, carrying with it wind, rain, ancient identities and a new language.

This class will feature two experts in their fields—Verlyn Flieger, Tolkien expert, and Carl F. Hostetter, the editor of The Nature of Middle-earth. Carl will join the June 25th class. 

Schedule: Four Sundays: June 4, 11, 18, 25 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET, online

• June 4—Flieger: Lost Road
• June 11—Flieger: Notion Club Papers Pt. 1
• June 18—Flieger: Notion Club Papers Pt. II.
• June 25*—Hostetter & Flieger: The Drowning of Anaduné 

Price: $130.00 Per Person (10% off for members)

Class format: Lecture and discussion. Questions encouraged, opinions invited.

The class text is The History of Middle-earth, Volume IX: Sauron Defeated.