SWG News

So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Putting Together the Presentation

Posted by SWG Moderators on 12 April 2025. Last updated on 26 April 2025.

You've written your proposal and been accepted to present at your first Tolkien conference—now what? This session explored how to write a paper and turn it into a presentation for a Tolkien conference. Topics in this session included:

  • How to structure your paper, including considerations unique to writing a paper that will become a presentation
  • What to include in each section of your paper, including how to prioritize and balance these sections for a presentation
  • Different ways to present a paper at a conference and how to build a presentation from your paper
  • Using universal design concepts to ensure that your presentation is accessible to everyone
  • Tools for adding interactive elements to your presentation

You can find a recording of the session, plus resources/links discussed in the session, here: So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Putting Together the Presentation

Archive Software Upgrade and Downtime Postponed

Posted by SWG Moderators on 7 April 2025. Last updated on 18 April 2025.

We will be performing a major software update on the SWG site/archive on Saturday, April 19, beginning in the morning Eastern Time, and members and visitors should anticipate site downtime on that date.

This update has been postponed! We will share the new date as soon as we have it.

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with cloudyhymns by Shadow

Posted by SWG Moderators on 4 April 2025. Last updated on 3 May 2025.

Tolkien popularized many elements of the modern fantasy genre and perhaps none more so than dragons. You don't even have to love a good fantasy novel to appreciate the mystery, aesthetic, and mythic roots of these beasts. But, in Tolkien, we know relatively little about dragons. As part of our ongoing interview series of presenters at Mereth Aderthad 2025, Shadow interviewed cloudyhymns about his paper "The Design of Dragons and the Doom of the Dwarves," where he draws on Norse myth and evidence from the legendarium to explore the nature of dragons in Tolkien's work and their connection to the Dwarves.

You can read Shadow's interview with cloudyhymns here.

Instadrabbling Sessions for April, May, and June

Posted by SWG Moderators on 2 April 2025. Last updated on 14 June 2025.

Anna (IdleLeaves) has kindly offered to host regular instadrabbling sessions on our Discord server on the first Saturday of each month! We welcome all creators to join us for an few hours of creating, squeeing, and hanging out with fellow fans on the following dates:

What is instadrabbling? Instadrabbling is a long-standing community activity in the Tolkien fanfiction fandom. A group of friends gets together on chat, someone throws out a prompt or four, and everyone writes a drabble (or whatever comes to mind). We share our creations in the server and admire each other's work. Instadrabbling is low-pressure and casual, and all are encouraged to participate to whatever degree they are comfortable. Instadrabbling responses shared on our server can be about any aspect of Tolkien's legendarium, not just Silmworks.

When we instadrabble, we meet on the #instadrabbling channel on our Discord server. Discord invites can be requested at any time from the moderators. All are welcome to join the Discord, whether you want to instadrabble with us or not!

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with polutropos by Dawn

Posted by SWG Moderators on 29 March 2025. Last updated on 26 April 2025.

Kidnap fam, the Tolkien fandom term for the Silmarillion plot point where Maedhros and Maglor raise Elrond and Elros after the third kinslaying, fascinates many Tolkien fanworks creators. In the next in our series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, polutropos spoke with Dawn about her presentation "'Kidnap Fam' and the Living Legendarium," which explores why this plot point attracts so much interest in the fandom.

You can read Dawn's interview with polutropos here.

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with Maglor by Shadow

Posted by SWG Moderators on 22 March 2025. Last updated on 4 April 2025.

Who was Gil-galad? One need not have even read The Silmarillion to begin reciting the answer to that, in the style of Samwise Gamgee. But who really was Gil-galad? Who was the person beyond the king we are presented in the texts?

In our latest in a series of interviews of Mereth Aderthad 2025 presenters, Shadow spoke with Maglor about his upcoming presentation on "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the Last High King of the Noldor." Maglor spoke about what draws him to Tolkien, his theories on Gil-galad as a character, and what makes fanworks so essential to unlocking the secrets of the last High King of the Noldor.

You can read Shadow's interview with Maglor here.

Mereth Aderthad Registration Is Open!

Posted by SWG Moderators on 15 March 2025. Last updated on 30 April 2025.

Mereth Aderthad 2025 is open to both in-person and virtual attendees, and registration for both is free. Registration will remain open through the day of the event, so there is no deadline to register!

Some key points:

  • You will be asked for a name and an email address at registration. Pseudonyms are fine!
  • We will use your email to contact you about event updates only.
  • Please do not register if you cannot attend, and cancel your registration if circumstances change and you are no longer able to attend. In-person seating is limited, and we pay costs per person and cannot afford to pay for empty seats. Contact a moderator if you need help canceling a registration. We are leaving registration open through the day of the event, so if you decide you can join us last-minute, please do!
  • There is an OPTIONAL donation to help us cover costs of the event. It really is optional! We want you there more than we want an extra few bucks! If you want more information on how donations will be used, see our Donation Policy.

Ready to register? You can register for Mereth Aderthad 2025 here!

New Challenge: Birthday Bash

Posted by SWG Moderators on 12 March 2025. Last updated on 26 April 2025.

On March 14, 2005, the SWG arrived in the small hours of the morning. It was still in very embryonic form, actualized only as a Yahoo! Group with no members and a series of very cringey posts on Dawn's LiveJournal (she had no idea how LiveJournal worked, having joined just that day to post these cringey posts in her insomnia-fueled effort to launch the SWG).

Twenty years later, this challenge debuted in recognition of two full decades of existence of the SWG. Each day, we will post an event that is an important hashmark on the timeline of the SWG's history along with three prompts that (at least in the challenge mods' mind) are associated with that event: a single word, a snippet of poetry (with a link to the full poem), and a public domain image. As always, you can use any aspect of the prompt to inspire your fanwork, including fragments of prompts or parts of the poem not included on the challenge page. The history snippets are fair game as prompts. You do not have to create or share your response on the day a prompt is posted. You can go back to past prompts, and you can stitch prompts from different days together into fanworks in cool and bizarre ways.

You can find challenge prompts for Birthday Bash here.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 25 April 2025. (Note that this extends the challenge past the usual deadline of the 15th so that those who wish to create for the later prompts in the challenge have the opportunity to do so!) For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Putting Together the Presentation

Posted by SWG Moderators on 12 March 2025. Last updated on 12 April 2025.

Mereth Aderthad 2025 is coming in July, and we are excited to have many fans who are presenting their meta, research, and scholarship at the event! But even though Tolkien fans engage in deep research and thinking about the legendarium all the time, making the step to presenting that work at conferences can feel intimidating. Even in a field as friendly to fan and independent scholarship as Tolkien studies is, the trappings of academia remain and, unless you have academic training, these can be a barrier to participation.

To help demystify conference proposals and presentations, over the next few months, we will be holding sessions aimed at helping fans make the sideways step to Tolkien scholarship by presenting their work at a Tolkien conference. Our next session is about how to put together the paper and presentation that you will share at the event, including various approaches to conference presentations, how to structure a presentation to maintain audience interest and not exceed time limits, and tools/strategies for using multimedia. (If you missed our first session, it can be found here: So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference? Writing the Proposal.)

Date: Saturday, 12 April 2025
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern Time (what is this in my timezone?) 
Location: join here | RSVP to have a reminder emailed to you

After the session, there will be time for questions, and we will stay online for a collaborative writing session for anyone who is interested.

All are welcome to attend and participate to whatever extent they feel comfortable! (In other words, you can keep your camera off and there are no breakout rooms.)

Can't make it on April 12? We will record the session so that anyone can view it.

If you need to change your Zoom display name before or while attending, learn how to do that here.

Mereth Aderthad Interview: Interview with Shadow by Himring

Posted by SWG Moderators on 8 March 2025. Last updated on 29 March 2025.

Shadow's presentation "The Aromantic in Tolkien" will be featured at Mereth Aderthad 2025 in July and will discuss three characters in Tolkien who can be read as aromantic. Himring had a chance to talk with Shadow about aromanticism in Tolkien and their personal and fannish inspirations for the topic.

You can read Himring's interview with Shadow here.

And find out more about our upcoming hybrid Mereth Aderthad event here.