Fantasy Hullabaloo

Another wizard-ish academic conference is taking place in Great Britain. The journalist Patrick Barkham catches up with the Tolkien bunch, who are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings. Barkham reports that Tolkien 2005 is quite different from, say,  a Terry Pratchett gathering.

The planners of Tolkien 2005 timed their meetup so that folks attending Worldcon 2005 last weekend in Glasgow could make the trip to Birmingham without skipping a beat. The Scotsman.com checked in on the gigantic sci-fi convention, which was enjoying its 63rd year.  And, of course, the Hugo Award winners were announced there.

Kelly Link, who is getting great buzz on the literature  blogs and elsewhere, won the Hugo for best novelette. She writes for adults, not children, and her latest collection  is Magic for Beginners, published by the press that she and her husband own. You can even read the Hugo-winning story, "The Faery Handbag," online; just follow the above link.  How cool is that! Plus, some breaking news: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology, which Link co-edited, was just nominated for a 2005 British Fantasy Award. Whew!

I was hoping that  Scholar's Blog would be blogging the Tolkien event live. It  doesn't look like she is, but do go visit her site. Michele,  an independent scholar of fantasy fiction,  reviews Troll Fell, which she read in one sitting. (Thank you to Book Moot for the link to A Scholar's Blog.)

More Links!
The Tolkien Society
Chicken Spaghetti's Troll Fell and Troll Mill link

Comments

[Michele]

Alas, being an independent scholar/writer, ie. unattached to an academic institution, I don't have the chance to attend conferences often, since they have to be funded from the pitiful earnings of my "day job", rather than from an academic department's greater resources. Therefore, much as I wanted to go, I've missed out on attending Tolkien 2005, which is a great shame as I'd love to meet both Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger, who's works I admire so much.

[Susan (editor)]

Michele,
welcome! And thanks for visiting! Those academic departments do have funds for this sort of thing, don't they? The big book gathering that I want to attend one day is the Hay Festival. That would be approximately 3 million Google ads for me to get there from here.

[Michele]

I've not been to the Hay on Wye Festival either - despite having lived for many years a lot nearer than I do now !