Monday, December 9, 2019

Mythopoeic Awards 2020: Call for Nominations

Individual members of the Mythopoeic Society are invited to nominate books for the 2020 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 15 2020; 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. 



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 2019 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 2017 through 2019 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.



Winners of the 2020 Mythopoeic Awards will be announced at the 51th Annual Mythopoeic Conference (Mythcon 51), to be held July 31-Aug 3, 2020, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  
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

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Mythopoeic Society News about our Yahoo Groups

UPDATE: For several years now the Mythopoeic Society has stated on its News page that our official means of disseminating news to the far-flung members of the Mythopoeic Society was through our MythAnn (Mythopoeic Announcements) list via Yahoo Groups. But Yahoo Groups is soon going the way of the dodo.

We have migrated the MythSoc Yahoo group to Groups.io, history and all. If you are a member of the Yahoo MythSoc group you will have received an email from Groups.io alerting you to the move; you will need to visit the website and update your "Subscription" choices if you don't want the default of each message being sent as an individual email. New members may sign up at Groups.io by clicking the "Apply For Membership In This Group" button.

We have archived the 147 current messages from the MythAnn announcements list on our website but do not believe it is worth the effort and expense to re-create the announcements list as a separate entity. Instead, we will include "official news" announcements in the general MythSoc discussion group; we will also include those announcements here, on our blog.

So if you don't want to subscribe to the general discussion group but only want to receive our "official news" posts, please subscribe to this blog; there are two options in the left-side panel: an RSS feed via a reader or by email.


Thursday, August 8, 2019

Belated News: Mythopoeic Award Winners ...and Albuquerque for Mythcon 51.

The Mythopoeic Society website shared the winners of the 2019 Mythopoeic Awards immediately after they were announced at Mythcon 50 but somehow they didn't get mentioned here, on our news blog... oops!

We are THRILLED to announce that the winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik and the winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature is Bob by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead.

We are equally thrilled to announce that the winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies is Verlyn Flieger, There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien. The winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy Studies is Dimitra Fimi, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology.

We congratulate all our winners, including Sarah O'Dell, winner of the 2019 Alexei Kondratiev Award, for her paper, “An Unexpected Poet: The Creative Works of Dr. Robert E. Havard” - you can read the full list of 2019 nominees if you scroll down on the 2019 Mythopoeic Award winners page.

We also invite you to stay tuned as more details are finalized regarding Mythcon 51, which will be held next summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico ...www.mythcon.org will forward to the new page as soon as we've got solid news.




Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Mythcon 50 - Advance Schedule and Check-in Procedures

What an exciting time! (she said, tongue firmly in-cheek)

Mythcon 50 is coming up THIS WEEKEND and you can peruse the Advance Schedule; as you can see, we're looking forward to a busy and program-packed conference!

We also encourage strongly that you read the Check-in Procedures because we've had many changes surprise us within the last week or two.

Advance registration is now closed but at-the-door and day membership rates are posted on the website.

We also remind you to REFRESH your browser windows and phones! Many of the Mythcon-related pages on the website have been updated, some significantly, and you'll miss them if your computer or phone is delivering an earlier iteration of the site.

See you soon!



Saturday, July 20, 2019

Mythcon 50 Advance Registration Closes July 25th

If you've been thinking about coming to Mythcon 50 --and we hope you are-- we encourage you to buy your membership now because online registration will close July 25th and "at the door" prices will be higher:

Currently: Members of the Mythopoeic Society pay  $80
Non-members pay  $95
Students* pay         $65

At Mythcon 50: Members of the Mythopoeic Society will pay  $90
Non-members will pay  $110
Students* will pay           $70

We anticipate day rates will be:
Friday:     $30   ($25 Mythsoc members and students)
Saturday: $50   ($45 Mythsoc members and students)
Sunday:   $50   ($45 Mythsoc members and students)
Monday:  $25   ($20 Mythsoc members and students)


Registration will start Friday at noon in the South Campus Plaza South Tower Lobby; programming will commence in the Aztec Student Union at 2:00 p.m. Friday, August 2nd; the schedule will be published on the website as soon as possible.




* Full-time students (12 or more credit hours per semester/quarter at an accredited college or university); please be prepared to present current, active student ID at check-in to confirm this rate. For children attending with parent(s) or legal guardian(s), 12 and under are free, 12 to 18 pay the student rate.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Mythcon 50: Significant Update!

One day after publishing Progress Report #2 we learned that SDSU has taken the Cuicacalli dorms offline for summer conferences and Mythcon 50 would be housed entirely in South Campus Plaza, at the Cuicacalli rates.

And then this week we learned that most of the rooms in South Campus Plaza, South Tower --where we will be staying-- are triples. That means one lower bed and two upper bunks (there is a desk and cupboard under one of the upper bunks) - so now we're also asking for people who can handle sleeping in an upper bunk to let us know (see PR#2 for details and email address). To clarify: we are not putting three people into any rooms, so at worst a triple will be used as a double and one of the people will need to sleep in the upper bunk.

We also want to remind people staying on campus that we need a deposit check for $100 made out to the Mythopoeic Society - this will cover the loss of both tap card and room key, should you not turn them in to the front desk at check-out! We will hold your check and return it to you after confirmation from SDSU.

PLEASE remember that our deadline for purchasing Room & Board packages, commuter dinner packages, stand alone banquet tickets (the banquet is included in the Room & Board package and the commuter dinner package) and parking permits sold through our website is JULY 15 - we can't guarantee that we will be able to honor requests or changes after that date.


Monday, July 1, 2019

Mythcon 50 - Progress Report #2

The second Progress Report for Mythcon 50 is now live on the website; it includes essential updates and reminders, especially the July 15 deadline for purchasing Room & Board packages for those staying on campus, the Commuter Dinner Package for those staying elsewhere but who would like to join us for Friday & Saturday night dinner and the Sunday evening banquet, and stand-alone banquet tickets for those not resident on campus who don't want the Friday & Saturday cafeteria dinners.

ALSO please remember there is no free parking on the SDSU campus and the least expensive parking permit options are through our website - that deadline is also July 15.

There is also a downloadable PDF version of PR#2 which includes the current membership of Mythcon 50.

DO come join us in beautiful San Diego, August 2-5, 2019!



Friday, June 14, 2019

Mythcon 50 Author Guest of Honor News

John Crowley, scheduled to be Author Guest of Honor at Mythcon 50, has had to cancel his appearance for personal reasons. We hope that John may be able to join us at a future Mythopoeic Conference.

But we are pleased to announce that Tim Powers has agreed to be our GOH Emeritus.  Tim Powers is a science-fiction and fantasy author and arguably heir to the legacy of Charles Williams. Tim has been Author GOH at Mythcon twice; first in Berkeley for Mythcon 26 and most recently at Mythcon 41 in Dallas, Texas. Tim has received numerous awards and nominations for his works, including the World Fantasy Award twice, for his novels Last Call (1992) and Declare (2000). He has been nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award five times, winning the award in 1990 for The Stress of Her Regard.

We encourage you to join us for our 50th Mythopoeic Conference in San Diego, California, August 2-5, 2019.


Thursday, June 6, 2019

Mythopoeic Awards Finalists for 2019 Announced

The finalists for the Mythopoeic Awards have been announced. The Society's webpage about the 2019 finalists is here or you may download a PDF of the announcement directly.  The winners will be announced at Mythcon 50, to be held August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego - we invite you to join us at our annual Mythopoeic conference and attend the banquet, at which the awards will be presented.

The press release follows:

The Mythopoeic Society 
2019 Mythopoeic Award Finalists 
June 3, 2019 

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature Finalists:

  • Mishell Baker, The Arcadia Project series: Borderline; Phantom Pains; Impostor Syndrome (Saga Press)  
  • Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands: A Novel (Big Mouth House)  
  • Ruthanna Emrys, The Innsmouth Legacy series: "Litany of Earth” in New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird (Prime Books); Winter Tide (Tor.com); Deep Roots (Tor.com)  
  • Madeline Miller, Circe: A Novel (Little, Brown)  
  • Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver (Del Rey)  


Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature Finalists:

  • Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado, The Chronicles of Claudette series: Giants Beware!; Dragons Beware!; Monsters Beware! (First Second) 
  • Jonathan Auxier, Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster (Harry N. Abrams) 
  • Sarah Beth Durst, The Stone Girl’s Story (Clarion Books) 
  • Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead, Bob (Feiwel and Friends) 
  • Emily Tetri, Tiger vs. Nightmare (First Second) 


Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies  Finalists:

  • Jane Chance, Tolkien, Self and Other: “This Queer Creature” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 
  • Lisa Coutras, Tolkien's Theology of Beauty: Majesty, Splendor, and Transcendence in Middle-earth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)  
  • Verlyn Flieger, There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien (Kent State University Press, 2017) 
  • Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2018) 
  • Jonathan S. McIntosh, The Flame Imperishable: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of Faërie (Angelico Press, 2017)  


Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies Finalists:

  • Dimitra Fimi, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children's Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology (Springer Nature, 2017) 
  • Elizabeth Sanders, Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy and the Victorian Crisis of Faith (McFarland, 2017) 
  • Jonas Wellendorf, Gods and Humans in Medieval Scandinavia: Retying the Bonds (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 
  • Mark J. P. Wolf, The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds (Routledge, 2018) 
  • Helen Young, Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness (Routledge, 2016)   




The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during 2017 or 2018 that best exemplifies the spirit of the Inklings. Books are eligible for two years after publication if not selected as a finalist during the first year of eligibility. 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 Children’s 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 Tolkien, Lewis, and/or Williams that make significant contributions to Inklings scholarship. For this award, books first published during the last three years (2016–2018) 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.

The winners of this year’s awards will be announced during Mythcon 50, to be held from August 2-5, 2019, in San Diego, California. 

A complete list of Mythopoeic Award winners is available on the Society web site at http://www.mythsoc.org/awards/.

The finalists for the literature awards, text of recent acceptance speeches, and selected book reviews are also listed in this on-line section. For more information about the Mythopoeic Awards, please contact the Awards Administrator: Vicki Ronn, awards@mythsoc.org.


Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Mythcon 50 HOUSING UPDATE

We have some fairly significant updates to the Mythcon 50 Room & Board page, making an easy way for people who really want or need a room with a private bathroom to have a room with a private bathroom. It is NOT in the same dorm, so you must be willing to walk about a block-and-a-half to Cuicacalli and the Garden cafeteria where Mythcon 50 breakfasts and dinners (except for the banquet) will be served - and you'll pay more. Read the details and check out the maps on the Mythcon 50 Room & Board page.

For those who are staying off campus or are commuting to Mythcon 50, we also now offer a "commuter dinners package" - this includes Friday and Saturday night dinner in the Garden cafeteria as well as the Sunday night banquet. Folks who only want Friday or Saturday dinner will be able to pay by credit card at the check-in desk in the Garden cafeteria, and stand-alone banquet tickets are for sale for anyone who is not staying on campus and hasn't bought the commuter dinners package.

Lunches are not included in the Mythcon 50 Room & Board package.

REMINDER: deadline for buying room & board packages, banquet tickets, commuter dinner packages, and parking permits is JULY 15 - we cannot guarantee that we can provide the services after that date. All of these can be purchased from the Room & Board page.

Mythcon 50 Registration
Progress Report #1 for Mythcon 50

Monday, May 13, 2019

Tolkien At Home - 1992 Special J.R.R. Tolkien Centennial Issue of Mythlore

Time marches on and Mythlore is now up to #134 but, back in 1992, shortly before the Tolkien Centenary Conference (a glorious week-long event held at Keble College in Oxford, England, and sponsored jointly by the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society), Mythlore released the 1992 Special J.R.R. Tolkien Centennial Issue of Mythlore with this beautiful color cover by BG Callahan.

The 79-page issue can be purchased on our website here as a photocopy or in digital form; individual articles are available for download here, at the Mythopoeic Society's digital archive at SWOSU.

There is also an archive of Mythlore cover art which is wonderful to view online.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Mythcon 50 PR#1 Available

The first Progress Report for Mythcon 50 is now available online, both as a webpage and as a downloadable PDF. This will also be emailed to members of the conference.

Additionally, Mythcon 50 Room & Board packages are now available for sale! 

If you haven't joined the conference, we encourage you to join us in San Diego, August 2-5, 2019. Please note: the Council of Stewards has decided that non-Society members will receive membership in the Society for the year of the Mythcon they join. We've always encouraged folks to join the Society and then join Mythcon at the MythSoc members' rate - but now we save you that extra step. Please indicate whether or not you want to be listed in Mything Persons, the Society's membership directory.

Finally, if you serve on the Mythopoeic Awards committee(s), please remember the DEADLINE for nominations is February 16 ...which is coming right up! Read the initial blog post here, for details.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Mythcon 50 Alert: Progress Report #1 and Price Rise

The first progress report for Mythcon 50 will be emailed to members of the conference staring Monday, February 4th.  PLEASE make sure that we have your correct email address! Unless advised otherwise, we use the email address associated with your PayPal account, so kindly email mythcon@mythsoc.org to let us know if you want a different email address associated with your account.

Progress Report #1 will also be available on the website as a PDF to read or download.

ALSO on Monday, the Membership rates will have a modest rise, so if you want to save a little money, join now.

We are looking forward to seeing y'all in San Diego this August!

Monday, January 7, 2019

Mythcon 50 CALL FOR PAPERS

Happy New Year!

The Call for Papers for the Fiftieth Mythopoeic Conference, Mythcon 50, has been released and is now available as a downloadable PDF here.

The first Progress Report will be released later in January and conference registration rates will rise, so we encourage you to join now to get the lowest available membership rate.