News and updates

It’s been a while since I’ve written. I hope some of you are still checking back here for new posts and haven’t given up on me! The purpose of today’s post is just to catch you all up on a few recent news items, mainly to do with me and my Tolkien work.

8th anniversary of Lingwë

I neglected to post anything last month, but a couple of weeks ago, Lingwë turned eight years old. My goodness, that’s a pretty long time in the world of blogging. A few of the Tolkien-related blogs I read have been around longer — e.g., John Rateliff just edges me out at March 2007 and Michael Drout has been blogging since 2002 — but there’s no doubt Lingwë is getting rather long in the tooth. :) Speaking of anniversaries, the day after tomorrow marks three years since I came to work at Microsoft and moved to the Pacific Northwest.

New book coming soon! Really!

I first shared news of C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology, which I edited with Salwa Khoddam and Mark Hall, back in November. At that time, we thought publication was right around the corner. “Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never,” as Tolkien said, and we have finally now finished the proofing and indexing. The publisher lists the book as already published (1 June 2015), so we obviously missed that, but it should be available very soon now. The list price is a bit steep at £52.99, but I’m hoping the book will at least end up in some libraries if not on the shelves of too many private enthusiasts and collectors! It’s actually a very good collection, if I do say so myself, so you really should consider it. Here’s an Amazon link in case you want to preorder it or share it around.

The 2015 Mythopoeic Awards — and a couple of streaks!

The Mythopoeic Society recently announced the finalists for the 2015 Mythopoeic Awards. Among the nominees for the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is John Wm. Houghton, Janet Brennan Croft, Nancy Martsch, John D. Rateliff, and Robin Anne Reid, eds., Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey (McFarland, 2014), to which I contributed the essay, “Tolkien’s Wraiths, Rings and Dragons: An Exercise in Literary Linguistics.” Tom himself sent me a note when he read the book in page-proofs thanking me for my contribution, which he said was “right along the lines I like to see myself.” You can imagine how gratifying that was! Congratulations to the five editors and to all the contributors of this fine volume.

And I mentioned streaks. With this book, McFarland has now had an MSA finalist in the running every year since their first appearance in 2008 (seven books, eight years in a row), so congratulations to them as well! They're cultivating a really solid portfolio in Tolkien studies and in myth, fantasy, and pop-culture studies more generally. And considering the almost foregone conclusion (my opinion, at least) that Tolkien’s Beowulf will win the award this year, I fully expect the Shippey Festschrift to be a finalist again next year, continuing the streak, and maybe the year after that as well.

Another streak I will dare to mention at the risk of immodesty. This also now makes five years in a row in which an MSA finalist has had a chapter in it by yours truly. In 2011, it was Brad Eden’s Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien; in 2012–2014, it was my book, Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays; and now in 2015, the Shippey Festschrift.

A special conference next spring

As those who follow my antics will know, I’ve attended the C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society’s annual conference seven times; I’ve had chapters in three of their books, two of which I also co-edited, laid out, and cover-designed; and I’ve won their Best Scholar Paper award five times in a row, every year it had been awarded, 2010–2014, until I took myself out of the running from this year on. So I think it’s safe to say I’ve given back as much (or more) as I’ve gotten out of the CSLIS. Giving back in that way pays many kinds of dividends, and the newest is that I’ve been invited to come to the next CSLIS conference (31 March–2 April 2016 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas) as a Special Guest, along with Keynote Speakers Devin Brown and Charlie Starr. I’ll be doing a special presentation and a panel in addition to my conference paper. There’s a real symmetry to this for me, because my first ever conference presentation was also at the CSLIS conference, also hosted that year in Siloam Springs, and it will have been ten years ago next spring. So, if you are in the region, think about coming to the CSLIS conference next year. I’ll share more details (e.g., the conference website) one they are available, but in the meantime, here is a first look at the flyer the conference chair, Jonathan Himes, has been circulating.