Mythopoeic Nostalgia Sale

Many of us are suffering from Mythopoeic Nostalgia as we wait for Mythcon 51 in 2021. We propose to recapture some of the intellectual excitement from our earlier days by reading one of our backlisted titles. Through the rest of 2020, we will select one of our backlisted titles each month to go on sale when purchased through our website at http://www.mythsoc.org/press.htm.

Our first featured title for the rest of July and August is:
The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America: From H. P. Lovecraft to Leslie Marmon Silko, edited by Amy H. Sturgis and David D. Oberhelman - 25% off, total $14.95 (normally $19.95 on our website and $23.00 from Amazon.com).

Mythcon 51 Postponed until Summer 2021

The Council of Stewards has considered carefully the state of upheaval and quarantine in which the country has been operating and come to the conclusion that our best path forward is to postpone Mythcon 51 for one year. The new dates are July 30 - August 2, 2021.

Our Guests of Honor, author Rivera Sun and scholar David Bratman, both concur and are happy to serve in that capacity next year. The hotel has been very accommodating and we dare say that our theme, "The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien," will be even more apt next year.

The Call for Papers is available and registration remains open; join now while the membership rates are low.

We hope to see you in Albuquerque NEXT summer!

Mythcon 51: Guests of Honor Announced

Mythcon 51: Guests of Honor Announced

We are thrilled to announce our Author Guest of Honor for Mythcon 51 is Rivera Sun, the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, The Roots of Resistance, and other novels. Her young adult fantasy series, the Ari Ara Series, has been widely acclaimed by teachers, parents, and peace activists for its blending of fantasy and adventure with social justice issues. The Way Between, the first book in the Ari Ara Series, has been read by numerous groups of all ages, while the second book in the series, The Lost Heir, has been nominated for the 2020 Dayton Peace Literature Prize.

Our Scholar Guest of Honor will be David Bratman, who has been reading Tolkien for over fifty years, and has been writing Tolkien scholarship for nearly as long. His earliest contribution to the field was the first-ever published Tale of Years for the First Age, right after The Silmarillion was published. Since then he has published articles with titles like “Top Ten Rejected Plot Twists from The Lord of the Rings,” “Hobbit Names Aren’t from Kentucky,” and “Liquid Tolkien” (on Tolkien and music). He’s been co-editor of Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review since 2013, and has written or edited its annual “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies” since 2004. David edited The Masques of Amen House by Charles Williams and contributed the bio-bibliographical appendix on the Inklings to Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep. He has also written on C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, Neil Gaiman, and others.


The conference theme for Mythcon 51 is the Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien. Does exploring the Other in Mythopoeia appeal to you? Our call for papers is open until May 15th!





Registration is now open; we invite you to join us next summer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 31- August 3, 2020.

Mythcon 51: Call for Papers

The Call for Papers for this year's Mythcon is now live. 

Please join us at Mythcon 51: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien, which will be taking place July 31 - August 3, 2020 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 
This year’s Mythcon theme provides multiple opportunities to explore the Other in fantasy and mythopoeic literature. Tolkien spoke in “On Fairy-stories” of “the desire to visit, free as a fish, the deep sea; or the longing for the noiseless, gracious, economical flight of a bird.” We invite discussion about the types of fantasy that are more likely to put us into contact with the alien, such as time portal fantasy and space travel fantasy.

As always, this is going to draw a number of interesting and insightful presentations and panels. If you would like to participate by submitting a paper, please check the CFP for submission information. If your interest has been piqued, please consider registering for our conference. See you in Albuquerque!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.