A poem in honour of the twentieth anniversary of Back to Middle-earth Month.

Back to Middle-earth we came in the spring—

again setting foot in Rivendell and the Shire,

shook off the anxious glooms of winter.

Each found a plot in need of tending,

set about planting bulbs anew.

Spring of joy—how shoots sprouted,

surpassing our wildest hopes,

golden mallos trembling in the breeze.

Sunny elanor gleamed in the meadow

and one year turned into twenty—

see how our saplings grew and grew:

our groves now wide green halls

welcoming birds of every colour

invite song on every branch!

Our harvest a wonder,

baskets burdened with berries,

barns filled with storied grain!

Praise to those who handed us spades,

saved seeds and sage advice for us—

and to that little box of elvish dust.

It is the 20th anniversary of B2MeM. 

To celebrate this, Dawn has been posting about early B2MeM events and the SWG involvement in them to the SWG Archive. This is part of an ongoing effort to restore (or sometimes newly upload) Special Projects pages on the new site.

Here is the instalment on B2MeM 2007. 

For the Spring into Arda team's plans for this year's event, see this Tumblr post.

This is the last call for participants in the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey! We will close the survey on January 1. Signal boosts on other Tolkien communities, if appropriate, are much appreciated.

Do you read or write fanfiction based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or a Tolkien media adaptation like the film trilogies or Rings of Power series? If so, we'd love to hear from you!

The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey first ran in 2015 and has run every five years since. It is run by Dawn "Felagund" Walls-Thumma, an independent scholar, and Maria K. Alberto, an assistant professor at Richland Community College. Both of us are also readers and writers of fanfiction ourselves. We are excited to introduce the third edition, which will give us insight into how the fandom has changed across the last decade!

If you choose to participate, we will collect basic demographic information and ask you about your beliefs and habits regarding reading and/or writing Tolkien-based fanfiction. Most questions are multiple choice, but there is also a space on each page where you can elaborate on any of your answers if you want to share more information with us. You can skip any question you don't want to answer and quit the survey at any time.

The survey will take about 20-30 minutes to complete.

Who can participate?

Participants must be 18 years or older.

• We want to hear from both readers and writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction.
• All levels of experience and involvement with Tolkien are welcome.
• Readers and writers of fic based on Jackson's film trilogies, The Rings of Power, and other Tolkien-derived media are welcome as well.
• If you read and/or wrote Tolkien-based fanfiction in the past but don't any longer, we still want to hear from you!

Click here to start the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey!

Art: "The Lonely Mountain" by MissMachineArt (CC license)

The Tolkien100 drabble community is continuing both on Livejournal and on Dreamwidth. Challenges are now monthly. The Livejournal community is here.

I continue to maintain a small community for short fanworks in the Tolkien fandom on Dreamwidth (mainly for written works under 1000 words, but including related rec lists and links to podfics), with monthly challenges. New participants welcome.

The community is here . For more information, see the community profile and the sticky posts at the community.

The majority of the presentations from Mereth Aderthad are now available as videos with accompanying transcripts or full papers.

Here are the videos so far posted to the SWG Archive.

The SWG celebrated the Mereth Aderthad event on 19 July.

Find more about this event here.

Some of the live presentations have also been uploaded to the SWG Archive, either in written form or as recordings.

A beautiful fanzine was produced for the event that includes written fanworks and art to go with the presentations. These can also be appreciated on their own.

Download the Mereth Aderthad Fanzine for free at this page on the SWG Archive

Dawn has been posting a series of snapshots of Silmarillion Writers Guild history as part of the current monthly challenge in honour of the anniversary this year.

The page with this series is here on the SWG Archive (expand the bit that says "Prompts").

Today's post commemorates the decision no longer to use the LiveJournal blog as an official social media site for SWG, taken in March 2022.

As the debut of the Amazon Rings of Power series approaches, many Tolkien fans are left wondering how the new show will impact the fandom they love. Over the next few months, our fandom history column Cultus Dispatches will tackle this question from various perspectives.

For one of our upcoming columns, we'd love to hear from you! Were you participating in the Tolkien fandom before either (or both) of the film trilogies took the world by storm? We're looking for fans willing to share what this experience was like and how they saw the fandom change (or not!) at these pivotal moments in its history.

You can write as little or as much as you'd like. Responses will be published in an upcoming Cultus Dispatches column. You are of course welcome to remain anonymous if you prefer.

If you'd like to share your fandom experiences around the films, click here to access the response form.

Also, if appropriate, please signal boost to other fans and groups who might have contributions from this era of fan history!

When we reintroduced our newsletter a little over a week ago, we unfortunately hadn't gotten subscriptions up and running yet for nonmembers. We're excited to announce that absolutely anyone can now subscribe to the SWG newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here or use the subscription box at the bottom of the sidebar on our website.

What wonderful and fabulous things can you expect with your subscription? Every Saturday, you will have the latest news and updates from the SWG and other fandom groups and events delivered right to your email inbox. You will receive a list of all of the fanworks added or update that week on our archive. And you will be the first to get to read that week's article or column!

If you've been receiving your SWG announcements here on LJ, subscribing to the newsletter is a great way if you want to stay in touch—and we hope you do!

Remember, too, that we are looking for contributors to our newsletter. Whether you want to write a column, an article, or collaborate with our newsletter team, check out our contributors' page for more information.