Happy New Year, everyone!

Normally, we release new challenges on the 15th of the month. At the start of the year, we mess up our own system and things get kind of weird.

January is always an amnesty month, when you can complete any challenges you missed from the previous year and receive the stamps for them. This year, because it is our twentieth and Grundy (who maintains the stamp collections) is generous, it is not just an amnesty month but a Jubilee! This means you get another crack at any challenge and can collect just about any stamp for it. (The few exceptions are listed in the challenge itself.) Was a challenge before your time? Or you just didn't get to a challenge you that thought sounded fun? Or you started a challenge fanwork and never finished it? Do it now and get the stamp!

Because it would be kind of a bummer to start the amnesty challenge, especially a Jubilee, two weeks into the new year, we start it on January 1, but it still runs until February 15, so you have a month-and-a-half for this one.

We will also be instadrabbling on January 18 and 19 on our Discord server. Instadrabbling is a long-running Tolkien fandom tradition (older than we are!) where we create and share fanworks together in chat. Prompts for this instadrabble weekend are open-ended, but the mods promise to toss out some challenge prompts for Jubilee so that we can fill those stamp collections! And while we love drabbles, any fanwork you want to create during the session is welcome, as long as it is Tolkien-related. You can find more details on the upcoming instadrabbling sessions here. All are welcome, whether you're an instadrabbling veteran, a first-timer, or just want to read and see the fanworks as they come in!

But today (Saturday), we will be hosting our first session on "So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference?" on writing the proposal. The session will be hosted via Zoom and all are welcome to attend and participate however you're most comfortable! (Want to lurk? Ask a ton of questions? We want you all here!) The session will be recorded and available afterward, but if you can make it live, it starts at 1:00 PM Eastern Time (find that in your timezone). You can join the session here.

We hope at least some of you will turn what you learn into a Mereth Aderthad proposal but, really, we think Tolkien fanworks people have brilliant ideas and want to do our small part to help and encourage those ideas to be shared. We hope to see you there!