Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
New Challenge: Title Track Tolkien's titles range from epic to lyrical to metaphorical. This month's challenge selected 125 of them as prompts for fanworks.
Our Annual Amnesty Challenge: New Year's Resolution Start 2026 off with creativity! If you missed a challenge or didn't get to finish or post a challenge fanwork, complete any 2025 challenge before 15 February to receive the stamp.
He was going to die. The molten rocks would burn him just like the cursed gem in his palm did. Maybe less painfully but still being burnt hurt and Maedhros knew it. He intimately knew it from his time in Angband where Þauron burnt him often in frustration and to toy with him and his master…
“Come on.” Maedhros grabbed his hand and pulled him along down the path, both of them quickening their pace now, until the trees opened up into a wide meadow filled with flowers, bright yellow celandine and dandelions and sweet-scented pale chamomile mingling with cornflowers and irises. On…
Aldarion storms off towards Middle-earth. For the Title Track challenge.
Current Challenge
Title Track
Create a fanwork using our collection of 125 titles from Tolkien's books, chapters, essays, poems, and fragments as inspiration. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Festival of Lights Fest
This is a fun and low-key event meant to encourage works about or inspired by Hanukkah, running this year in conjunction with the Potluck Bingo challenge. Read more ...
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the parallels between the concept of abnegation in the scientific work surrounding the atomic bomb and in The Silmarillion. The relinquishment of self-interest in favor of the interests of others, abnegation was identified by Tolkien as a powerful act of spirit and reason. The legendarium has many examples of the complexities of abnegation, which parallel similar discussions held by physicists during and after World War II.
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the many similarities between Tolkien's three "twilight children," Tinúviel, Lómion, and Undómiel (Luthien, Maeglin, and Arwen) in terms of appearance, plot, and cultural background. Yet these three characters play very different roles in the text.
Presented at Mereth Aderthad 2025, this paper makes the case thata, although the term "aromantic" had not yet been coined in Tolkien's day, many of his characters can be read as aromantic. The paper takes a closer look at Aredhel, Bilbo, and Boromir as three examples of characters who can be read as aromantic.
“There’s a goblin hiding in the taters, Dad!” Pippin hefted the pan, which was much too big for him to carry, let alone wield.
Around the World and Web
March Challenge - Tolkien Short Fanworks
Tolkien Short Fanworks is running a challenge for the month of March to create a Back to Middle-earth Month themed challenge.
Tolkien Fashion Week 2026
This two-week-long Tumblr event is dedicated to honoring the world of fashion and textiles Tolkien wrote about in his books.
Celegorm and Curufin Week 2026
Celegorm and Curufin Week is a Tumblr week celebrating the relationship between Celegorm and Curufin Feanorion
Back to Middle-earth Month 2026
Back to Middle-earth Month is returning for it's 20th year with many prompts and archival efforts.
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.
Loaded with fabulous details that define setting, characterization, and backstory. I am no expert on architecture or design, but you've convinced me of the authenticity. Love the discussion of the strangeness of adjusting to the new light. Beautifully paced and lovely language.
Loaded with fabulous details that define setting, characterization, and backstory. I am no expert on architecture or design, but you've convinced me of the authenticity. Love the discussion of the strangeness of adjusting to the new light. Beautifully paced and lovely language.
Thank you so much! I'm still at the point in my fiction writing where I'm doing it by instinct, and I get very nervous when I have to put some of it out there for other folks to see. It's so much easier to do that knowing there is appreciation for what I am trying to do. The story I want to tell (which is at heart about thingmakery/subcreation) is perforce set at a time of enormous social and even cosmic change. It's important to me that I both stick as closely as I can to whatever canon is available and also make some attempt to have my characters grapple with what is going on around them, from delight to PTSD and everything in between.
Glad you like it! I'm trying to imagine how it must have been for a princess to be as displaced in as many ways as Galadriel was at the beginning of the First Age.
Thanks! One of the things I want to explore about Galadriel is her identity as a sort of Yavanna-Jesuit, that is, one of the most deeply educated in the branches of knowledge for which Yavanna is renowned. (As I look at her history in Middle-Earth I see the influence of that early education playing out across especially Eldarin but also Edain culture, and I will be writing more about it as this series develops.) I imagine that her meeting a sentient being who is also clearly tied to Yavanna would have set up a form of religious resonance for her, especially in the first full spring season of Beleriand under Anor. Perhaps Galadriel's hunting cousins would have preferred to meet Ents rather than Entwives, given their shared ties to Oromë!
Wow, it's a really interesting and original idea that the elves could communicate to the trees like this, and that they could mutually shape trees' future. Well done!
Thanks! I feel like I've always known how Galadriel (and others) would and could talk to trees, but this is the first time I've had to consider at length how she might have gone about "encouraging" them.
As for Teleporno, well, he's an old-fashioned kinda guy. He'll probably not let that phrase slip again for years!
By rights it should be, yes. :-) But honestly, I don't think I am ready for the emotional turmoil of telling Galadriel about her family's woes. It's hard enough writing her side of things, which she is repressing very determinedly.
Comments on The Fairest Vessels That Ever Sailed
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.