Around the World and Web

Revamped Tolkien Estate Website

The Tolkien Estate has revamped their website for the Seventh Age! The new site contains a timeline and biography of Tolkien's life, selected important scholarship, and important letters and writings from Tolkien.

Concerns over the Estate's stance on fanworks are addressed in this article here.

Tolkien Society Seminar on Tolkien and the Gothic (Call for Papers)

The Tolkien society has announced a seminar on the theme of Tolkien and the Gothic, which will be a hybrid event held online and in-person at the Hilton Hotel, Leeds on 3rd July 2022.

Tolkien’s engagement with the Gothic is not as straightforward as one may assume. His earliest understanding of the word and the language of the Goths can be traced to his reading of Joseph Wright’s A Primer of the Gothic Language (1892). His early fascination with Gothic consequently fed his own experimentations with language creation and legendarium.

However, his prose and poetry show a clear awareness of the Gothic literary tradition that had previously captured the imaginations of eighteenth and nineteenth century writers. Beyond his writing, Gothic influences can be found in Tolkien’s life: from the European fascination with Gothic architecture to the physical and psychological terrors of the Great War.

The seminar aims to explore the ways that Tolkien engaged with the various applications of the Gothic and how this in turn has influenced creative engagements with Tolkien.

The Tolkien Society invites abstract submissions of no more than 300 words, for a 20-minute paper and 5 minutes of questions. Submissions can be made here and should be submitted before end of day, Friday 1st April [UK time].

For more details see the Submissions page.

The seminar will be free for all attendees (both online and in-person). Sign-up for the seminar will open soon.

Reading Fictional Languages Symposium

This one-day symposium aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to consider the nature of reading fictional languages. The event will be held in a fully integrated arena at the University of Nottingham, comprising both on-campus and online participants. It is thus designed to be accessible, enabling participants to attend from around the world, as suits their circumstances, as part of a truly hybrid event. The on-campus room will be as covid-safe as possible with a maximum occupancy. Refreshments and lunch will be provided in line with covid guidance. The symposium will be held on 11 March 2022 from 9:30-17:00, UK Time, and costs £10 for in-person participant (cost includes lunch) and £5 for online attendees. You can register to attend the symposium here.

T4Tolkien: A Trans-Positive Tolkien Discord Server

This is a space for uplifting trans-focused Tolkien fandom content, but anyone is welcome to join!

You do not have to be trans to get involved, and non-trans discussion is absolutely welcome. We wanted to create a space where trans identity is normalized and accepted, and in doing so that means integrating other aspects of everyday life into this server. This is a trans-positive, trans-friendly space, but it’s not a trans-only space!

See this post for more information on how to join T4Tolkien.

February Challenge at tolkienshorfanworks (Dreamwidth)

The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for February has been posted.

The thematic challenge is: melting.

The formal challenge is: proverb. 

Tolkienshortfanworks is a community  on Dreamwidth and new joiners are always welcome.

More details about these prompts and the monthly challenges at the linked post.

Call for Proposals: German Tolkien Society Seminar

The 18^th Tolkien Seminar of the German Tolkien Society (Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft) is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and takes place in a hybrid format (mainly in person but with online options) at the Department of English (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik) at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena from 28^th to 30^th October 2022.

If you would like to present a paper, please send a short abstract (no longer than one page) and a short biography, as well as the preferred way of participating (online or in person) by 30^th May 2022.

As can be seen from many of the texts recently published in the volume The Nature of Middle-earth (2021; edited by Carl Hostetter), Tolkien extensively studied the different aspects of the space- and time-continuum. He did so often in order to give his subcreated world a cohesive and coherent temporal and spatial framework. Therefore, aspects belonging primarily to the field of ‘worldbuilding’ will be one aspect to be explored. However, we also want to encourage participants to investigate the narrative effects of space and time.

The seminar aims at bringing together researchers from various disciplines in order to explore the theoretical foundations and the literary mise-en-scène of the time-space continuum in Tolkien’s work.

See the full call for proposals for contact information and full details.

Bring Her Bleeding Heart to Me: Dark Femslash Commentfic Meme

For this annual multifandom event, participants can prompt dark femslash fanworks or create for the prompts that have been posted. All fanworks and femslash pairings are welcome. This is an 18+ event. The full rules can be found here.

Fandom Trumps Hate Sign-Ups Open

Fandom Trumps Hate is an online auction of fanworks, with the proceeds going to small, progressive nonprofits that are working to protect marginalized people. Fandom Trumps Hate has raised over $135,000 for a range of amazing organizations.

Sign-ups for this year's auction are now open and close on February 13. Bidding runs February 23-27.

See this post on Tumblr for more information on how to sign up as a creator (here is the sign-up post on Dreamwidth).

Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology XII

It’s time for the twelfth annual Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology! As always, we'll be collecting short lady-centric podfics by different readers in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files.

The submission deadline for podfics is February 14th, and we will post the anthology on February 28th.

The theme for this year's anthology is exploration. It's optional—all podfics are welcome as long as they follow the rules laid out in the Submission Guidelines—but feel free to let it inspire you if you'd like.

If you are not familiar with this project, you can see the previous eleven anthologies here.

To Podficcers: Interested in participating? We'd love to have you. This should be a low-stress project, even for people who are new to podficcing, due to the word-count: 1500 words or less (with many being as short as 1-2 minutes). If you'd like to record something for this anthology, please fill out this quick google form and we'll send you the link to the spreadsheet where we'll be keeping track of all the podfics. If you would prefer to interface via email instead of using the form/spreadsheet, you can email klb at sekritproject@gmail.com, and she will reach out to get you set up.

Complete guidelines for the Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology can be found here.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2022 Schedule Posted

The 2022 schedule for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang is as follows:

• 1st April - suggestions spreadsheet opens
• 15th April - sign ups open
• 8th May - artist sign ups close
• 15th May - art drafts due
• 20th May - gallery open
• 22nd May - author sign ups close
• 29th May - claims
• (***TBA - additional claims***)
• 5th June - post claims check in
• 12th June - final art due from artists who chose the “free rein” collaboration option
• 26th June - check in #2
• 31st July - check in #3
• 7th August - final art due from all other artists
• 14th August - final check in / deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter
• 4th September - fics due in collection
• 9th September - reveals
• 12th September - staggered Tumblr reblogs begin

Note that this year's bang will only allow two submissions per artist in order to keep numbers manageable.

To keep up with the 2022 event, follow TRSB on Tumblr or @TolkienRSB on Twitter.