Thanks for the mention, Paul! (And it serves as another reminder that I need to make some updates, including your list of alliterative poems in the Collected Poems volume ).

Rereading Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers: Sauron and the Barber. Some thoughts on how evil makes inroads with decent people. annasmol.net/2025/09/26/r...

Canadians: urge the government to maintain its commitments to sciences and humanities research funding.

"The Muster at Marquette" is a documentary premiering today featuring friend of the show Dr. Bill Fliss and his work on the Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection at Marquette University. Follow the link to give it a watch! youtu.be/QC-JkWDq7dk?...

New episode alert! zencastr.com/z/_gLEDrCs We have a special treat with you this episode... a discussion about "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" with the film's credited "Tolkien Expert" (and a Lodger herself), Janet Brennan Croft!

My book Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc is released into the wild today! Here's a quick peek at a few more pages, artwork here by Győző Vida, Yassen Panov, Alexander Korotich and Sergei Iukhimov #Tolkien www.bloomsbury.com/uk/illustrat...

📨You are warmly invited to our next annual conference at University College Dublin @ucddublin.bsky.social 📅 Saturday, 25 October 2025 📜The theme is "Education and Early Medieval England" and our programme is available to view online. 📲Registration is now open: www.eventbrite.ie/e/1631647263...

I’ve added my voice to the collection and you can too! Learn about the oral fandom collection here: www2.mu.edu/library/arch...

Brilliant.

A recording of my talk, "Grendel's Mother Talks Back: Contemporary Women's Mythopoeic Revisions," is now available. This presentation was part of the Online Midsummer Seminar sponsored by the Mythopoeic Society last month. @mythsoc.bsky.social. annasmol.net/2025/09/05/g...

We are delighted to announce our September meeting’s guest speaker, @willsherwood.bsky.social from @uofglasgow.bsky.social. Also the Education Secretary for @tolkiensociety.org, we can’t wait to hear him present! Join us at 6pm BST on Monday 29th September via Teams. DM or email us to attend.

A belated thank you to everyone who helped make this year's OMS truly exceptional! Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Mythopoeic Press's Perilous and Fair was such an honor. We're pleased to announce that the presentations are now live at dc.swosu.edu/oms/oms4/ for everyone to enjoy!

Douglas Anderson's new article in the Journal of Tolkien Research concisely summarizes what has long been suspected about Josef Madlener’s “Der Berggeist”: that it is in fact not the “Origin of Gandalf,” despite Tolkien's faulty memory identifying it as such scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Tolkien language nerds, scans of the first five issues of Parma Eldalamberon, long only available as photocopies, are now available open access: dc.swosu.edu/parma/

My main professional organization, @medievalacademy.bsky.social, has just pub'd a statement about the use of AI in its journal. Basically, DON'T! "AI tools cannot take ethical or legal responsibility for their output or enter into legal agreements." www.medievalacademy.org/page/AIPolicy #MedievalSky

Did you miss out on Dr. Collier-Jarvis' talk on Little Girl Zombies at Theorizing Zombiism? Not to worry, you can check it out on Youtube: youtu.be/GpGHJ0x_my0?...

COULD YOU PLEASE HELP ME? 😀 I would love to have my newsletter get to 1,000+ subscribers by Frodo's and Bilbo's Birthday on Sept 22... ... but for that I would need your support in sharing this and letting people know about THE ROVING RANGER. If you need to hear a reason why... here are seven 😅

Eglerio! My series editor’s copy of @joelmerriner.bsky.social’s Illustrating The Lord of the Rings in the Soviet Bloc: Iconographies of Difference has just arrived! The book will be available from 18 Sep - details here: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/illustrat... @uofgfantasy.bsky.social @tolkiensociety.org

Hello everyone. Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax has a tenure-track job in Enlightenment rhetoric and / or 18th-century literature. Tell everyone. www.msvu.ca/about-msvu/c...

Testing, testing…is this thing on? We’re so excited to be joining Bluesky! 🦋 Our program is based in #Halifax #NovaScotia and built on the value of Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing)-- looking at the world through more than one perspective. Learn more about our program here: www.msvu.ca/academics/ba...

In today’s piece I’m having some fun with nonsense insects and flowers on the moon in Tolkien’s story Roverandom. There may also be a call to artists… 🎨 #TolkienTuesday #TolkienTrewsday dimitrafimi.substack.com/p/tolkien-tu...

🚨 Mark Carney is trying to force 10,000 flight attendants back to work while Air Canada refuses to pay them for essential duties. Enough corporate greed. Enough union busting. Enough attacks on workers' rights.

It’s weird to me that people keep starting new Substacks and still don’t know that Substack is extremely bad news Please get off Substack 😭 www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/...

🧙‍♂️📚 Green Book of the White Downs - "Imladris: In the Library of Elrond" 📗 2025 & 2026 Upcoming Tolkien-related books (17 August 2025) Upcoming list of Tolkien-related books for 2025/26 (finally!) 👉 Check here: greenbookofthewhitedowns.blogspot.com/2025/08/imla... #Tolkien #Book #LOTR #Hobbit

Major academic publishers' revenue and what they pay authors and reviewers: Revenue: Elsevier: $3.9 billion Springer Nature: $2 billion Wolters Kluwer: $1.6 billion Wiley: $1.8 billion Taylor & Francis: $800 million Sage: $500 million They pay: Authors: $0 Reviewers: $0

I'm relaunching my website, Set Yet Speaking, which will host my translations of medieval literature. In this first post, I discuss why I'm giving this another go, why translation matters, and how a short extract from Beowulf inspired the name of the site. nikolasgunn.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/w...

Thrilled to announce the papers for @tolkiensociety.org’s online seminar this October! You can find the list of papers and the link to register (it’s free!) here: www.tolkiensociety.org/events/semin...

The journey to Middle-earth and understanding J. R. R. Tolkien begins inside Marquette University's archives, which has more than 11,000 pages of drafts for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Good piece. The one thing I’d add is that Tolkien also read a lot of William Morris, so I do wonder how much of his anti-industrial streak is drawn from that particularly English left-wing tradition. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/tolk...

Have you seen the 1967 animated film of #Tolkien's The Hobbit? Directed by Gene Deitch, the 12-minute film was made purely to retain the adaptation rights. It was shown only to a limited audience until the producer's son uploaded it to YouTube. Do you like it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBnV...

Two conferences dealing with Tolkien and with women and gender in mythopoeic works to take place this week -- The NY Tolkien Conference and the Online Midsummer Seminar of the Mythopoeic Society. Follow the link for more info. annasmol.net/2025/07/28/t...

youtu.be/wpOruovTHyU New video series just announced: The Tolkien Tutor! Dr Chris Vaccaro, well-known Tolkien scholar and teacher, promises fun and learning on a wealth of topics. Can’t wait to see what’s coming up!

I've recently posted several Tolkien fanfic poems in alliterative verse. Here's a thread collecting them all together, plus a link to a page on my site that points to a few more.

If you are in New York, join us next Thursday, 7/31, for a day filled with presentations and discussion of JRR Tolkien. Check out the website for all the details and the registration link. 2025 Conference nyctolkienconference.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/2...

One of the cooler screens from my Mereth Aderthad talk: Internal evidence that at some point, Tolkien intended alliterative verse to be a go-to form of poetry for the elves! #Tolkien #alliterative #poetry #Beren #Luthien #Tinuviel #tolkiensky #alliterative #poem #alliterativeverse

My poem/essay is indebted to @dianewatt.bsky.social concept of ‘overwriting’, @pilgrimteresa.bsky.social ecofeminist reading of Grendel’s Mother’s wetlands, @kimmoorepoet.bsky.social on desire lines, @ellafrears.bsky.social poems wi desire lines, & Finn Mackay on feminist activism in movement 🙏🏻 TY!

My brother wants to hire people who can read a prompt and cogently answer the question that is asked. It’s a slog to find competent writers.

"Masterful Meters of Midgeard" The Silmarillion Writer's Guild on Tolkien's Poetry www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/node/7847 #Tolkien #Tolkiensky #MiddleEarth #fanfic #alliterative #poetry #alliterativeverse

Tolkien at IMC Leeds 2025 annasmol.net/2025/06/28/t...

Just posted to The Journal of #Tolkien Research my book review of @roberttally.bsky.social excellent Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Form and Ideology scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Now available for pre-order: Queer Approaches to Tolkien. mcfarlandbooks.com/product/quee...

Please register for our conference celebrating 10 years of Perilous and Fair!!!

The full recording of the 2025 Tolkien Lecture, 'The Uses of Fantasy' by @zenaldehyde.bsky.social, is now available on the Tolkien Lecture YouTube channel! youtu.be/_ZhcGNoD5xA

Researching Tolkien? A new book series to be published by McFarland- Studies in Tolkien - is now accepting proposals for scholarly monographs or shorter Critical Companions. Follow the link for proposal guidelines. annasmol.net/2025/06/18/s...

Customs and Border Protection has broad authority to search travelers’ devices when they cross into the United States. Here’s what you can do to protect your digital life while at the US border.

Registration is now open for in-person or online attendance at the CONFERENCE ON ALLITERATION IN POETRY AND CULTURE at the University of East Anglia, September 1st. store.uea.ac.uk/conferences-... Conference website here: www.uea.ac.uk/groups-and-c...

Delighted to see that my creative-critical Old English eco-poetics article is now out, Open Access, in Postmedieval (thanks to @postmedieval.bsky.social): link.springer.com/article/10.1... #medievalsky #oldenglish

The Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award went to Cory Lavender, former MSVU English student, for his collection Come One Thing Another. “Lavender summons, celebrates, and stories the ‘divergent strands’ of his lineage, including his African Nova Scotian ancestry, here lovingly coaxed out...”

And if you love Whitby you may also love Ian Greenwood's Caedmon Prize winning poem, "The Whitby Elegy" #Whitby #poetry #poetrysky #alliterativeverse alliteration.net/poetry/the-w...

Another edition of the Roving Ranger has just been sent to its subscribers. Including: Sarehole Mill tours; Tolkien Days in Germany (with me!); Bovadium Fragments; Tolkien was a Hobbit; why a dragon?; why so weird about Tolkien?; vinyl LotR soundtrack; tea towels; LotR flipbooks and more...