Interview with Dawn Felagund by Shadow by Dawn Felagund, daughterofshadows

Dawn Felagund is the featured author for Savannah Horrell's paper "By Guile Committed: Comparing Tolkien’s Thieves to Beowulf." Shadow spoke with Dawn about her story for Savannah's presentation, the juggling act of creating a fanwork for the event while also organizing it, and the power of reading Tolkien as a work of history.

Shadow: Hi, Dawn! We're sitting down today to discuss your story for Savannah's presentation "By Guile Committed: Comparing Tolkien’s Thieves to Beowulf". What draws you to this presentation in particular?

Dawn: The best part of being the event organizer is that I get to see everything that comes in, first of everyone. When the abstract for Savannah's presentation came in, I was like a little kid with my palms and nose pressed to the candy store window! But ... I'm the event organizer. I don't get first choice, quite the opposite, so when fanwork sign-ups opened, I had to sit on my hands and behave myself. When new sign-ups had trickled down to nothing and the presentation still didn't have a writer signed up, I happily scooped it up.

The reason Savannah's presentation is among those I'm most looking forward to is because I wrote my Master's thesis on Beowulf, specifically on how the poet uses oral-formulaic elements to create a sense of longing for the past. For the two years that I was researching and writing my thesis, Beowulf was like a grim, smelly roommate in my head. I know Beowulf scholarship better than Tolkien scholarship, but despite knowing the many connections the texts share, the two have never actually met in my mind. As a scholar, I'm fine with that, but as a fiction writer? I'm so excited to see where they go together! I specifically love how Savannah is exploring the angle of thieves as heroes; my story "Thieves' Triptych" ultimately considers why we make some stories heroic and others into cautionary tales.

Shadow: I'm happy for you that you get the chance to write a story for this presentation, after all! Beowulf is one of the topics that always hovers at the edge of my fandom consciousness, beckoning for my attention, but I haven't had the chance to actually dive into it, so I am quite excited to learn more through Savannah's presentation and the accompanying fanworks.

Would you be willing to give us a teaser for the story you are writing? Maybe share a small insight on what or who it is about or themes you want to explore?

Dawn: Here, I'll offer some how-the-sausage-is-made honesty about participating in a big fandom project you're also organizing: the story isn't written yet. I remember in my early days of fandom, bristling at the term "list mom" for women who run fandom projects, but there is truth to it: You care for everything and everyone else and, once that's all put to bed and it's quiet around you, you pull out your own projects. The story was due for the zine checks two days ago. Oops! But! I've done a bit of writing of it in my head, which is where most of my stories begin. (And I'm not giving myself an extension that others working on the zine haven't been allowed as well!)

I loved Savannah's idea but was struggling with how to turn the idea of who gets to be a hero and who is dismissed as a criminal into something that wasn't insanely long, i.e., something suitable for a zine and a five-minute reading. Here, getting a sneak preview of some of the Mereth Aderthad creative works helped me think through my own assignment. Several Mereth Aderthad fanworks are arranged in threes. Jaz's presentation on children named "twilight" and yours exploring three aromantic characters and the works of art that go with them. Then Independence1776 sent this incredible short and highly structured trio of ficlets about Maglor and Elrond where the ficlets and the structure act synergistically with each other, amplifying both the meaning and the emotional power of the piece, and I had it: three glimpses of thieves and how poets/authors/narrators craft thieves in their work. What makes a loremaster or a poet decide a theft is justified? Heroic? Or a cautionary tale?

One ficlet will be about how Lúthien is depicted: how she is "lowered" into thievery in the process of historical transmission, and another will consider how the Geats took Bilbo's story and turned it into a cautionary tale that is the third section of Beowulf. I'm not sure about the third yet, but it will come!

Shadow: It will, and you're already off to an intriguing start! I don't know what it is about groups of threes but they just work so well! My own stories also follow the pattern, though mostly in a narrative sense and not a structural one.

Tolkien's works are full of threes, too! We have the three Silmarils, three rings for the Elven kings, three groups of Elves sailing to Valinor ... What is your favourite part of Tolkien? Is it a group of three or something completely different?

Dawn: It's a group of seven, actually! Well, eight or maybe ten, depending on who you include. It was the house of Fëanor that first pulled me into fandom, now more than twenty years ago. I was so interested in them as characters: They seem to be paragons among the Noldor in Valinor. Even Celegorm, who is rightfully reviled for his actions during the First Age, was a student of Oromë and commanded the love of the second greatest dog to ever live. (Second greatest because the greatest dog is my dog Hermione!) So what happened? What led them to their fall?

It's just such a human story. Tolkien said, "There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them," and even as an agnostic and heathen who doesn't believe in any Biblical fall, I agree with him ... sort of (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "131 To Milton Waldman"). I'd say what is interesting is the potential to fall because that is in all of us, all the time. It's a cliff edge we are all of us balanced upon, all of the time. The story of the Fëanorians illustrates that and is terrifying and therefore fascinating: What makes a human turn to inhumanity?

I also love reading Tolkien as historiography and specifically his narrators and, even more specifically, Pengolodh. This is where my fiction and scholarship overlap. Everyone recognizes Tolkien as a gifted philologist and the impact of language on his world, but less attention is paid to him as a historiographer, and how, by crafting his stories as histories, he complicates them and opens unlimited new perspectives on familiar characters and events. It really makes the legendarium infinite for me, as a fiction writer, and as a scholar, has brought me so much joy to tease out exactly how he works this particular magic in his work.

Shadow: I'm continually fascinated by the work you do regarding Pengolodh and narration! It's such rich ground for exploration, but also something I would never have considered to question or investigate if left to my own devices. But that is the joy and beauty of fandom, the ability to discover other people's ideas and views and build more together.

While we are talking about your fiction and scholarly works, where can we find them if we want to explore your works ahead of Mereth Aderthad? Feel free to highlight any works you're especially proud of!

Dawn: All of my Tolkien fanfiction, with the exception of a few very early ficlets that are on LiveJournal, is on the SWG archive. And if I'm talking about my work—and work I'm proud of—let's include that too: the SWG archive. The SWG is now twenty years old, and its archive is eighteen years old. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) has come to dominate every fandom, and the work they do to preserve and celebrate fanworks is phenomenal, but community archives ... well, they grow out of communities, our values, and our discussions and relationships with each other, and they play an essential role. Most of us would not want to be a part of fandom without community. I hope Silmarillion fanworks creators who don't archive with us will consider doing so!

Of my fanfiction, my best-known work by far is my novel Another Man's Cage, which gets into those questions of the potential to fall by considering the early years of the house of Fëanor. My favorite work is my Republic of Tirion series, in which Finarfin un-kings himself in the Fifth Age and turns Tirion into a democracy. Standalone stories would be The Sandglass Runs, a Caranthir/Orodreth story written for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang; Eka and the Quen, an experimental science fiction piece that was a treat for TRSB; and I will always have a soft spot for Home Alone: Forgotten in Formenos if only because it was so much fun to write.

My scholarly work can be found on my website dawnfelagund.com, and I just had a paper published in the Journal of Tolkien Research, Grief, Grieving, and the Quenta Silmarillion.

I am a deeply introverted person working in a wildly extraverted profession (teaching), so most days, social media has all of the appeal of a swim across a river full of piranhas in a meat dress, but I do occasionally crawl out from under my rock, put on my meat dress, and post to my tumblr.

Shadow: Plenty to keep the curious busy until Mereth Aderthad! I've read far more of your more scholarly stuff than I have read of your fiction, but it's always a treat, so I highly recommend our readers check these out when they get the chance!

Last question, and then I'll let you get back to all the other things you need to do.

After the last months of preparation, Mereth Aderthad is getting closer and closer now. What are you most looking forward to during the event?

Dawn: Seeing it all come together! This event started on April 6, 2024, when Grundy and I were sitting together at the Tolkien at UVM conference, and I was chatting on Discord with Quente at the same time. The SWG's twentieth birthday came up. Grundy was a part of the first Mereth Aderthad, which was much more casual, smaller, and held in my backyard. I mentioned maybe doing it again, but bigger this time, and the three of us kind of ran with it. I brought it to my husband—because ultimately, he and I are on the hook for paying for what we can't raise in donations, so both of us needed to be okay with all of the various commitments involved—and we both agreed without hesitation that we wanted it to happen.

Since then, it's been very piecemeal: developing it into a workable vision, securing a venue, writing a seemingly endless stream of announcements and updates and calls for participants, working with printers on the zine, figuring out logistics around tech and accessibility and food ... it's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant: There's a tusk, there's a tail, there's a trunk—I just can't wait to see how all of the pieces become what I hope will be an absolutely amazing weekend for those of us participating!

And really, that's what I hope for the most from Mereth Aderthad: a chance for us in the SWG to share our research, our creativity, our wisdom, and our friendship with each other. The SWG is twenty years old. It is a lot of work. It is a part-time job many weeks where, when payday comes, I owe the employer. I would be lying if it didn't cross my mind from time to time to hand it off and let someone else run it. But the impact of this group on so many people, including me, is profound, and I find I can't give it up. I'm hoping Mereth Aderthad embodies that love we have, not just for Tolkien's legendarium, but for each other.

Shadow: I'm certain it will. This community is a rock for many of us, not just because of the fandom we love, but also because of the people we meet and the friendships we make that wouldn't have been possible without the SWG and I think many of us are incredibly excited to get the chance to celebrate that community, be that in Vermont or on Zoom.

Thank you so much, not just for taking the time to chat with me about your work, but also for all that you do for Mereth Aderthad and the SWG as a whole! I know that I would not be the person I am today if I hadn't met this community four years ago, and I am so very grateful for everything I've learnt and was able to share in turn.