Mythopoeic Awards 2019: Call for Nominations

Individual members of the Mythopoeic Society are invited to nominate books for the 2019 Mythopoeic Awards, and/or to volunteer to serve on any of the committees. (You need not join the committee to make nominations.) The deadline for committee volunteers and for nominations (limit of five per person per category, please!) is February 16, 2019; please send nominations to the awards administrator (see contact info below) via e-mail (preferred) or U.S. mail. Authors, publishers, and their representatives may not nominate their own books for any of the awards. Books published by the Mythopoeic Press are not eligible for the awards. The Mythopoeic Society does not accept or review unsolicited manuscripts.

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The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume novel, or single-author story collection for adults published during in 2016 that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings”. Books not selected as finalists in the year after publication are eligible for a second year. Books from a series are eligible if they stand on their own; otherwise, the series becomes eligible the year its final volume appears.

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children¹s Literature honors books for beginning readers to age thirteen in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rules for eligibility are otherwise the same as for the Adult literature award. The question of which award a borderline book is best suited for will be decided by consensus of the committees. Books for mature “Young Adults” may be moved to the Adult literature category.

The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies is given to books on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and/or Charles Williams that make significant contributions to Inklings scholarship. For this award, books first published from 2014 through 2016 are eligible, including finalists for previous years.

The Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies is given to scholarly books on other specific authors in the Inklings tradition, or to more general works on the genres of myth and fantasy. The period of eligibility is three years, as for the Inklings Studies award.

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Winners of the 2019 Mythopoeic Awards will be announced at the 50^th Annual Mythopoeic Conference (Mythcon 50), to be held August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego, California.

Please contact Vicki Ronn, the Awards Administrator, to nominate books, volunteer for committees, or ask questions about the Mythopoeic Awards process.

Dr. Vicki Ronn
Friends University2100 W. University Ave.
Wichita KS 67213
awards@mythsoc.org

Mythcon 50 GUESTS of HONOR Announced

We are thrilled to announce that John Crowley, author of  Little, Big (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Winner, 1982) and Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, (Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Winner, 2018) will be our Author Guest of Honor at Mythcon 50. John has written many other books, including Aegypt (a series of four novels), The Translator, and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land. This will be his first appearance at a Mythcon.

Our Scholar Guest of Honor will be Verlyn Flieger, author of Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World (1983; revised edition, 2002); A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faerie, which won the 1998 Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Studies; and Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology (2005). She won a second Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Studies in 2002 for Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, which she co-edited with Carl Hostetter, and a third Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Studies in 2013 for Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien.

Both John Crowley and Verlyn Flieger are especially appropriate to be our Guests of Honor at Mythcon 50, with a theme of "Looking Back, Moving Forward" — Crowley won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award early in his writing career and then won again in 2018, much later in his career; Flieger was the first person who earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation on J.R.R. Tolkien and has spent the subsequent four decades teaching and advising other Tolkien, Inklings, and Arthurian scholars.

Registration is now open; we invite you to join us next summer in San Diego, California, August 2-5, 2019.

The Fiftieth Mythopoeic Conference: August 2-5, 2019

The date has been confirmed for the Mythopoeice Society's fiftieth summer conference, Mythcon 50, August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego, California. The conference theme is Looking Back, Moving Forward and fantasy artist Sue Dawe has given us permission to use her draft logo while she finished up her illustration of the Janusian theme.

Conference Registration is open; membership rates are expected to rise at the end of January.

2018 Mythopoeic Award Winners Announced

Congratulations to all of our 2018 Mythopoeic Awards winners!

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature: Garth Nix for Frogkisser

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy: Michael Levy & Farah Mendelsohn for Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies: Sorina Higgins for The Inklings and King Arthur

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature: John Crowley for Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

More information can be found here

Mythcon 49 Advance Schedule Now Available

EDITED to add: the schedule now includes the names of the papers, not just the names of the presenters.

You can see the advance schedule for Mythcon 49 programming listed by last names of presenters. Click through on the link to download the PDF.

We're also encouraging folks to participate in our Mythcon 49 Buddy System!

Are you new to Mythcon or returning after some years away?

Frodo didn’t do it alone, so neither should us Mythies! We will not be doing a full Room & Board package this year —only the Stewards' Reception Friday evening and the Sunday-night banquet— but are arranging some options for dining with fellow Mythies at nearby restaurants. One of these options includes a buddy system to pair up conference attendees who are newer to the society or to Mythcon with more seasoned Mythies.

Veteran Buddies would primarily be responsible for making sure their Newbie doesn’t dine alone (not necessarily with you, every time, just not alone), but might also attend panels with them, invite them to Bardic Circle, or peer pressure them into trying their hand at Golfimbul. Such camaraderie between fans and scholars of mythopoeia, modeled on the friendship among the Inklings themselves, is an important cornerstone of our society—and keeps Mythcon attendance and society membership up!

Check the website to participate and include your preferred method of contact for your buddy. If you are new (or new-ish) to the society, or this is your first (or first-ish) Mythcon, you can also contact Megan to ask to be paired with a veteran Mythie.

Mythcon 49 Hotel Block CLOSES SOON!

If you're coming to the 49th Annual Mythopoeic Conference in Atlanta next month (July 20-23) and you haven't booked your hotel room yet, PLEASE do so now! Our room block and special rate of $159 per room, per night, ends on Wednesday, June 20th.

Go to the  website for Mythcon 49 and scroll down to "Location" for instructions.

In a nutshell: Guests can contact the Ritz-Carlton call center at 1-800-241-3333 and state that they are coming to The Ritz-Carlton, Atlanta (Downtown), for Mythcon July 2018 and provide the agent with their requested dates of stay; the agent will identify your group rate of $159.00.

Guests can also reserve online at http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Atlanta/Default.htm - enter their desired dates of stay, enter the seven letter Group/Promotion code MCJMCJA and click find to complete the reservation process.

ALSO don't forget to buy your banquet ticket!  You'll want to be there for the Annual Mythopoeic Awards and all the other fun activities which take place Sunday evening.

Hope to see you next month at Mythcon 49!

2018 Mythopoeic Awards Finalists Announced

The Mythopoeic Society has announced the finalists for the 2018 Mythopoeic Awards. More information about the awards, can be found in the Awards section of the Mythopoeic Society's website and in the press release for the 2018 finalists. The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during the banquet at Mythcon 49, to be held July 20-23, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mythcon 49 Progress Report now available

The Mythcon 49 Progress Report is now available to read online or download and print.

Look out for our second progress report, coming in June, for group meal outing options and suggestions for activities around Atlanta.

AND remember the extended deadline for Paper Proposals is MAY 15.

Come join us in Atlanta, July 20-23, 2018, at the Ritz-Carlton Downtown as we explore our theme, On the Shoulders of Giants.

Mythlore 132

Mythlore 132 is available now! The print versions are on their way to subscribers, and those who subscribe to eLore can now access. Both formats are available for purchase through our website. The electronic version includes several color illustrations which appear in black and white in the print version. This edition of Mythlore is even bigger than the last issue and includes a special section of articles, notes, and reviews on Divination in Mythopoeic Literature by guest editor Emily E. Auger.

Mythcon 49 Guests of Honor Announced

Our Scholar Guest of Honor for 2018 is Dr. Robin Anne Reid. She is a Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Her teaching areas are creative writing, critical theory, and marginalized literatures. Please see her full bio on the Mythcon 49 site for publishing credits. Perhaps most notably for Mythies, she wrote an outstanding bibliographic essay on the history of scholarship surrounding female characters in Tolkien's legendarium in Perilous and Fair, published by the Mythopoeic Press.

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Our Artist Guest of Honor is Donato Giancola. He balances modern concepts with realism in his paintings to bridge the worlds of contemporary and historical figurative arts. He also teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the Illustration Master Class in Amherst, Massachusetts and online through the SmArt School, and appears at various institutions, seminars, and conventions, from San Diego to Rome to Moscow, where he performs demonstrations in oil paint and lectures on his aesthetics. Please see his full bio on his donatoart.com for influences, awards, and credits.

A sampling of Donato's artwork is reproduced below. He has a full Middle-earth gallery on his site, as well.

Mythcon 49 will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, July 20-23, 2018. Please visit www.mythcon.org for more information and to join the conference.