Around the World and Web

Darkest Night Exchange: Nominations Open

The Darkest Night is an exchange fest celebrating dark themes in fanworks. You sign up with a list of characters/ships to create a fanwork (either fanart or fanfic) for another person, and someone else will do the same for you. This exchange is run on Archive of Our Own. It's time for Darkest Night 2021 to rise again! Note that the dates have shifted from past years. The Darkest Night schedule:

• Nominations open: August 6 
• Nominations close: August 13 (8:00PM EDT)
• Sign-ups open: August 14 
• Sign-ups close: August 22 (8:00 PM EDT)
• Works due: September 26 (8:00PM EDT)
• Works revealed: October 3 (8:00PM EDT)
• Creators revealed: October 10 (8:00 PM EDT)

Nominations open on August 6 and close at 8:00 PM EDT on August 13. You may nominate 6 fandoms, with 5 characters/groups in each, and 10 additional tags. There is no rarity requirement regarding which fandoms can be nominated from. RPF, Crossover Fandoms, and Original Works are all allowed. Non-traditional fandoms such as songs, poetry, anthropomorphism, etc. are also allowed. See the Darkest Night community for more on nominations.

Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology II Accepting Submissions

The Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology is collecting short podfics that center characters of color in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files. 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.)

This year's submission deadline is September 12th, and we will post on September 30th.

Our theme for this year's anthology is community. 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’d like to get a sense of this project, you can see the previous CCPA anthology here.

Complete guidelines and submission instructions are available on the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology page.

Oxonmoot 2021: Programme Posted and Registration Open

Oxonmoot is an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world. Oxonmoot 2021 is being held over four days, from the afternoon of Thursday 2^nd September until lunch time on Sunday 5^th September. For the first time, this will be a hybrid event bringing together online delegates with those attending in person at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Register to attend Oxonmoot online
Register to attend Oxonmoot in-person
Talks and papers programme

The deadline to submit a proposal for an activity has been extended to 1 August 2021. Find more about how to submit an activity here.

Tolkien OC Week: fandom event for original characters and underdeveloped characters

Tolkien OC Week is a fandom event focusing on original characters and underdeveloped characters in Tolkien's world which will be held on Tumblr during the week from  26th July - 1st August 2021 for the first time. 

The event schedule for 2021:

Day 1 (26th July): Shipping - create a piece of fanwork about an OC that you ship with a canon character.

Day 2 (27th July): Family members - create a piece of fanwork about a character who fills a gap left in a family tree (e.g., Legolas’ mother, Maglor’s spouse, Aragorn and Arwen’s younger children).

Day 3 (28th July): Background characters - create a piece of fanwork about a character who is in the background of canon scenes and is either never mentioned or barely mentioned in the story (e.g., an extra from Laketown, a Teler defending their ships during the First Kinslaying, the Haradric man that Sam sees die) and show their view of the events.

Day 4 (29th July): Self insert/reader insert - create a piece of fanwork that includes yourself being in Middle Earth, or write a reader insert story.

Day 5 (30th July): Worldbuilding - create a piece of fanwork about a character who lives in a different place or time from the main canonical events (e.g., a character from Rhûn, a character who stays in Valinor after the Darkening, a character living in Gondor when the kings were still ruling etc.) and flesh out their world.

Day 6 (31th July): Forgotten characters - take a character who is neglected (e.g. Bob and Nob in Bree, Eärwen) or abandoned by Tolkien (e.g. Trotter the hobbit) and make them your own by creating a piece of fanwork about them. Or, completely redesign a canon character to make them yours (e.g., Gil-Galad becoming Fin-Galad).

Day 7 (1st August): Freeform - create a piece of fanwork about whatever resonates with you.

More details in the linked post.

Call for Papers: Tolkien Sessions at Leeds International Medieval Conference 2022

Paper abstracts are currently being sought for the following Tolkien sessions for the Leeds International Medieval Congress, to be held at the University of Leeds on 4-7 July 2022. These sessions are organised by Dr Andrew Higgins and sponsored by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow.  The special thematic strand of the conference will be “Borders” which is reflected in several of the suggested sessions.

Paper submissions are being sought for the following sessions (for descriptions, see the full call for papers):

• Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches
• Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard C. West  
• Crossing Borders in Middle-earth 
• Borders between Life and Death in Tolkien’s Legendarium
• Family Ties:  The Limits of Kinship in Tolkien’s Middle-earth
• Orientation, Transgression, and Crossing Borders of Middle-earth
• Tolkien as a Gateway to Interdisciplinary Teaching: A Roundtable

Paper titles and abstracts are due by August 31, 2021 and should be 150 words maximum. Conference presentations will be 15-20 minutes long.

"The Nature of Middle-earth" Available 2 September 2021

On 2 September, a new compilation of Tolkien's unpublished writings will become available: The Nature of Middle-earth, edited by Carl F. Hostetter, a Tolkien linguist whose has worked previously on Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon. In an interview with Hostetter, Tolkienista's Cristina Casagrande describes Hostetter as playing "the role of a descendant of the forgotten Ælfwine, bringing back the seeds of the Tree."

"Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time," says Hostetter in the interview, "I started work on what would become The Nature of Middle-earth nearly 25 years ago, when I received a bundle of photocopies that Christopher Tolkien referred to as 'late philological essays'." According to the interview, NoMe will include Tolkien's writings, previously published in Vinyar Tengwar, “Ósanwe-kenta,” “Notes on Órë,” and “The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor,” as well as late writings on Elven reincarnation.

Athrabeth Podcast: Episode 36: Tolkien and Diversity Recap

Episode 36 of the Athrabeth podcast discusses the Tolkien Society Seminar, Tolkien and Diversity. Hosts Jude and Stef attended the Tolkien Society Seminar last weekend and are very proud to present their recap of the events. It was a tremendously enriching seminar and they're pleased to have the opportunity to highlight all of the seminar's contributors. Listen to Episode 36: Tolkien and Diversity Recap here.

Fall for Tolkien Artist Sign-Ups Open July 15

How the Fall for Tolkien event works: Artists submit their art.  All art submitted should be "finished" before it is submitted.  Art is added to a super awesome presentation.

At the end of the submission period, artists who also want to write get first dibs at making claims.

Authors choose art to write for.

Each author can make up to three claims to start; as they finish pieces, they can return and make additional claims.  Artwork can be claimed multiple times.

Complete Fall for Tolkien guidelines are available on their website.

Fall for Tolkien Schedule

July 15: Artist Sign-ups Open
September 1: Author Sign-ups Open
September 15: Artist Sign-ups Close
September 20: Art Submissions Due
October 3: Author Sign-ups Close
October 10: Author Claims (for Artists) Open
October 17: Author Claims (for Authors Only) Open
December 18: Author Submissions Due
December 21: AO3 Collection Opens

Welcome Back, Tolkien Fan Fiction!

The Tolkien Fan Fiction archive has been rebuilt and is back online! First opened in 2005, TFF is open to members of the Henneth-Annun Groups.io discussion list and accepts nearly all fanfiction based on Tolkien's works. The complete TFF rules are here.

Fansplaining Podcast, Episode 153: The Productive Fan

In Episode 153, “The Productive Fan,” Elizabeth and Flourish respond to a listener letter about some fic authors’ tendencies to see themselves as ‘bad’ if they aren’t producing written work. Topics covered include the perils of prescriptive writing advice, the Protestant work ethic, Flourish and Elizabeth’s personal writing habits, and the impact of professional authors’ conversations on fanfic authors’ discourse. Find the podcast and a transcript on the Fansplaining website.