Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.
Forgotten Ground Regained Features Tolkien-Inspired Alliterative Poetry
In late July, issue 11 was released of Forgotten Ground Regained: A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse, containing 22 poems by 18 poets on the theme, "Alliterative Verse in Arda" (poetry on or about J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien's Middle Earth).
The current issue is one of a series of thematic issues. Past themes include "Poems of Love and Loss", "Images of the Natural World", "Mythic Tales and Sacred Truths", "Protests, Prophetic Truths, and Poetic Battles", "Norse and Icelandic Forms", and "Psalms and Meditations". Forgotten Ground Regained is edited by SWG member and Mereth Aderthad presenter Paul D. Deane. (You can view his Mereth Aderthad presentation on alliterative verse in Tolkien here, in addition to alliterative poems created to accompany his presentation in the Mereth Aderthad fanzine.) Several members and friends of the SWG appear in the magazine, including Paul, Himring, Zdenka, Dawn Felagund, and Savannah Horrell.
You can read the "Alliterative Verse in Arda" of Forgotten Ground Regained here.
Forgotten Ground Regained is always open to Tolkien-based poetry, so aspiring scops should check out the submission guidelines here!
Sindar Week 2026
Welcome to Sindar Week 2026!
This year’s event will be from Monday September 7th to Sunday September 14th
The prompts are:
Day 1 — Firsts & Lasts | Doriath | Thingol & Celeborn
Day 2 — Water & Air | Falas | Círdan & Lúthien
Day 3 — Sorrow & Grief | Mithrim | Daeron & Nimloth
Day 4 — Friends & Rivals | Mirkwood | Thranduil & Legolas
Day 5 — Earth & Fire | Lothlórien | Celebrían & Amroth
Day 6 — Joy & Celebration | Edhellond | Nellas & Mablung
Day 7 — Language & Memory | Cuiviénen | OCs & Unnamed Characters
As always, the prompts are only optional and inspirational, and there is no requirement to stick to them. Mix and match, use none, one, all of them. Happy creating!
Finwean Sibblings Prompt Fest 2026
2026 schedule:
Prompting: September 1st-14th
Publishing of prompt list: September 19th (at latest)
Claiming Begins: September 21st at 18:00 UTC
Works due: November 20th
Posting starts: November 27th
Full Rules & Requirements can be found here: Desktop | Mobile
Tolkien Sapphic September
Tolkien Sapphic September is a month long event focusing on Sapphic relationships and characters in Tolkien and adjacent materials.
This is an ANTI-AI event- ai created, assisted, or concept built pieces are NOT ADMISSABLE.
This includes: canon characters, lotro characters,ocs, imagines, x readers, and self inserts.
This event is FULLY FOCUSED on Sapphics this INCLUDES ALL 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 identities!
Past works, works in progress, and late submissions are WELCOME!💫
Submissions to the blog and reblogs here from the Tolkien Sapphic September tags will begin the 1st of September and go throughout the month.
We have an AO3 collection which is happily accepting submissions
Basic rules:
- No AI
- No incest
- Main ship MUST be sapphic.
- Any sexual works must be 18+
- Appropriately tagged for readers
Prompts
These are totally optional and can be altered and combined!!! Think of this year as a custom tea blend all for you!!!
Tea chart
Pine
Old lady yuri
Snowed in
Winter
Lemon balm
Hate sex
Enemies to lovers
One bed
Strawberry
Devotion
Kink
Lust
Basil
Pining
Childhood friends
One bed
Earl grey
Arranged marriage
Letters
Royalty
Books
Rosemary
Modern au
Meet tragic
Adoration
Instrument/art
Valerian
Tragedy
Good bye
Last kiss
Hope
Berry
Horror
Hunter/hunted
Survival
Dandelion
Forbidden love
Loyalty
Resiliency
Hope
Rose
Toxic (to sweet or not)
Opposites attract
Rivals to lovers
Mint
Pride
Gift
Three kisses
Chamomile
Meet cute
Friends to lovers
Fluff
Ginger
Yearning
Indirect kiss
Confession
Smut with feelings
Catnip
Crossover
Self insert
Indulgence
Around the World and Web Archive
Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.
Fandomtrees 2022 Sign-Ups Open
Fandomtrees is a mulitfandom gifting fest. Participants sign up with information about the fandoms, prompts, etc, they want, as well as any DNWs. Other people will then leave gifts under the trees, and the mod(s) will reveal those on the reveal date.
Schedule: (Updated schedule for 2022)
Sign-ups: November 17 - December 7
Gifting: November 19 - January 4
Reveals: January 5
Important Links:
Rules/FAQ
Sign-Up Post
AO3 Collection
Tolkien Latin America Week 2022
Tolkien Latin America Week will be a week dedicated to celebrate Latin American cultures, peoples and traditions through Tolkien’s Legendarium. I started my series of Tolkien, but make it latino a while ago and it inspired me to create this event. The event will be held on Tumblr.
It will start on November 21st (Monday) at 00:00 Brasilia time (what time is it in my country?). The week will end on November 27th, but feel free to post after the week is over. I’ll still check tags, mentions and submissions for a while.
Everyone is free to participate, you don’t have to be latino nor have deep knowledge about Latin America to celebrate this event. This is also a great opportunity for you to learn more about this region.
All creations are welcome - arts, graphics, gifs, fanfics, etc. - as long as they represent a Latin American element(s). It can be languages, cultures, traditions, anything from Latin America. Creations should be Safe for Work, no explicit content will be accepted to make this week accessible to everyone.
Please tag your contributions with #tolkienlatamweek and mention me @tolkienlatamweek.
Here are the prompts! They are not mandatory, but they can inspire you. Feel free to create outside these themes.
- Day 1 (November 21st): Valar | Festivals | Clothes | Traditions
- Day 2 (November 22nd): Maiar | Places | Nature
- Day 3 (November 23rd): Elves | Dances | Songs
- Day 4 (November 24th): Dwarves | Religious diversity | Languages | Foods
- Day 5 (November 25th): Men | Immigration | Migration | Cultural Diversity
- Day 6 (November 26th): Hobbits | Folklore | Stories | Tales | Superstitions
- Day 7 (November 27th): Freeform | OCs | Diversity (can be sexual orientation, gender, disability, neurodiversity or race)
German Tolkien Society: Pocast Interview with Brian Sibley
Brian Sibley is the editor of the new volume "The Fall of Númenor" and granted an interview about his work on the book to the German Tolkien Society as part of their Tolkien Podcast. The interview includes how this book came to be, what’s in it (and what’s not), how Brian Sibley became a detective in the Second Age and what Alan Lee had to do with all that.
Tolkien Secret Santa 2022 sign-ups open
The Tolkien Secret Santa 2022 sign-ups are now open on Tumblr.
Sign-ups will be open from November 7 through November 21.
Mods Fern, RC, Fea, Anna, and UE write in the announcement:
This event is an exchange of small digital gifts: you sign up and mention what you’d like to create and to receive, and we’ll match you with fellow Tolkien fans who’d like those kinds of gifts! You can read more about Tolkien Secret Santa at our event guide here, and there’s a mobile-friendly list of links here.
Also as in recent years, we have both the main gift exchange and two concurrent Advent Calendars. The Advent Calendars are when participants sign up to make bite-sized gifts, two of which will be posted each day for the first part of December. Read more about this optional part of the event here!
It is very exciting for us to be returning for a sixth year of Tolkien Secret Santa, and we are delighted to welcome both new and returning participants! We hope this event will bring you much joy, creativity, and community in a holiday spirit.
Survey: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Fanfiction
Sidney Garner, a Masters student at the University of Texas at Austin, seeks participants for a survey study about aromantic and asexual fanfiction and how those authors engage with the canon. You do not need to be on the aromantic or asexual spectrum yourself, only write characters in your fanfiction who are. You must be over 18 years of age to participate. Find out more details about participating in the study here.
The Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2022 Prompt Meme Sign-Ups Are Open
The Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2022 Prompt Meme sign-ups are open.
Time to sign up for the Lord of the Rings Secret Santa exchange! Slash, femslash, het and gen, fic and fanart; you can request it all.
Lord of the Rings Secret Santa started as a traditional exchange and has been running as a prompt meme since 2020.
This year's timeline (2022):
- Prompt Posting: November 1st to 30th.
- Claiming: December 1st to 31st.
- Collection Open for Posting: December 1st to 31st
- All Fills Due: December 31st.
You will be able to post up to 2 prompts, and the mods will do their best to make sure that at least one of your prompts is filled.
Please note that this is an FPF challenge. (i.e. Fictional, not real people fiction/RPF.) The challenge is open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth!
Admin posts are made to the Dreamwidth community and can also be followed on Tumblr.
Fills are posted to the collection on AO3.
More details at the linked post.
November challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community (Dreamwidth)
The November challenge prompts have been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth.
Here is our thematic prompt and our formal challenge for November:
The thematic prompt is: "spooky" or "eerie".
The formal challenge is "children's or nursery rhyme".
As always, the two prompts can be filled independently, if you wish, or combined with prompts from other challenges.
New participants welcome!
More details on the challenge in the linked post.
Call for Proposals: Tolkien Society Seminar 2023 – The Mighty and Frail Númenor
The Tolkien Society Seminar is a short conference of both researcher-led and non-academic presentations on a specific theme pertaining to Tolkien scholarship. The Society held three seminars in 2021 (Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien, Tolkien and Diversity, and Translating and Illustrating Tolkien) and their online setting has seen increased interest with over 700 attendees from 52 countries at ‘Tolkien and Diversity’. After the seminar, all paper recordings from the seminars are uploaded onto the Tolkien Society’s YouTube channel. We are delighted to run hybrid seminars where delegates can enjoy discussions on Tolkien in person and online.
The Mighty and Frail Númenor will be held on Sunday 2nd July as a hybrid event at The Hilton, Leeds. This is a free event.
The seminar aims to examine the role that Númenor plays in Tolkien’s legendarium. Although the island was pivotal to the secondary world narrative of the Second Age, it also re-emerged consistently in Tolkien’s writing and thinking from The Lost Road (1936-37), through The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and The Notion Club Papers (1945), to ‘Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner’s Wife’ (1965) and other late essays. Númenor, then, is central to the growth of Tolkien’s legendarium and is a catalyst for seismic change in Arda.
Although Tolkien consistently refers to Númenor as the greatest human kingdom, its overwhelming military splendour and grand civilisation mask its frailty, which only grows over time. As is seen with the fractions of the King’s Men and the Faithful, Númenor’s fall may have been inevitable from its conception. However, its legacy in the Black Númenóeans and the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor evince that its legacy is still somewhat alive after its downfall.
Papers may consider, but are not limited to:
- Númenor’s historical significance
- Species, race, and hierarchy
- Gender
- Hubris, hamartia, corruption, and manipulation
- Political tension (internal and/or external to the island)
- Death and the lust for corporeal immortality
- Colonialism and post-colonialism
- Adaptations of Númenor
- Legacy and posterity in Middle-earth
- The metaphysics of time and age
The Tolkien Society invites abstract submissions of no more than 300 words, for a 20-minute paper and 5 minutes of questions. The call for papers’ deadline is midnight Friday 13th January 2023.
To submit an abstract for the seminar, please click here. The seminar welcomes papers presented in person and online.
Half-Elven Week, October 10-16
After last year, the Half-Elven Week returns to Tumblr. Half-Elven Week is an event dedicated to appreciating some of Tolkien’s beloved characters. To note – as half-elven, we count all characters who have the blood of elves and some other race, no matter if they are called so in the canon.
This week is organized by @armenelols and @yellow-feathered-faerie and is held on October 10th – October 16th 2022.
Prompts remain the same as last year:
Day 1 - Being Different; Doriathrim - Lúthien, Dior, Eluréd, Elurín, Elwing
Day 2 - The Choice; People of Sirion - Elwing, Eärendil, Elrond, Elros
Day 3 - Heritage; Númenoreans - Elros, his children and descendants
Day 4 - Power; People of Rivendell - Elrond, his children and descendants
Day 5 - Legacy; Princes of Dol Amroth - Galador, Gilmith and their descendants
Day 6 - Loss; Parents of half-elves - Melian, Thingol, Tuor, Idril, Beren, Nimloth, Celebrían, Elros’s wife, Imrazôr, Mithrellas, and others
Day 7 - Freeform
Rules:
- prompts aren’t mandatory, only a source of inspiration
- all kinds of content are allowed - art, fanfiction, headcanons, meta, character analysis, moodboards, fancast, aesthetic, etc.
- OCs are welcome - children of Caranthir/Haleth, Aegnor/Andreth, any elf/other race pair
- tag your work #halfelvenweek and tag us @halfelvenweek so we can find your post
- if you have any questions, asks are open!
October Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks (Dreamwidth)
The prompts for October have been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth.
The thematic prompt is: "bridge" or "bridges".
These could be real bridges, of which there are plenty in the Legendarium, for example, the ill-fated bridge of Nargothrond or the Last Bridge over the Hoarwell, where Glorfindel left the beryl, or metaphorical bridges that you build or burn.
The formal challenge is "inscription".
The inscription could be on the bridge but, as always, the two prompts can be filled independently, if you wish, or combined with prompts from other sources.
More details on these monthly challenges at the linked post.