I was saddened this morning to hear about the death of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the giants of fantasy literature, and an author I have written about and taught for many years. I was asked to write a…
New article on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters in The Conversation
I had a new (festive) article published yesterday on the The Conversation, titled: “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Christmas letters to his children bring echoes of Middle-earth to the North Pole”. In this article I discuss the letters from Father Christmas Tolkien sent…
Tolkien Sessions at IMC Leeds, July 2018
I am very pleased to announce that all six sessions on J.R.R. Tolkien I proposed for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds 2018 have been accepted! This will be the fourth consecutive year of papers on J.R.R. Tolkien at IMC…
Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy announced as runner-up for Katharine Briggs Folklore Award
Last Wednesday I traveled to London for the Katharine Briggs Lecture 2017, and the announcement of the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award. My new monograph, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy, had been shortlisted for this prestigious international award, previously won…
Philip Pullman in Cardiff: La Belle Sauvage, Lyra’s world, and the writer’s craft
This afternoon I was fortunate to attend a brilliant event organised by Waterstones and Literature Wales. Following the publication of La Belle Sauvage on Thursday, Philip Pullman visited Cardiff to talk about the new book and his creative process more…
CFP: The Celtic Obsession in Modern Fantasy
CFP: The Celtic Obsession in Modern Fantasy You are invited to submit a paper for an edited volume tentatively titled The Celtic Obsession in Modern Fantasy Literature to be submitted to Palgrave Macmillan. Scholarship on Celtic-inspired fantasy literature has…
The value of English literature at GCSE (really? do we even need to argue this?)
Last week, Owen Sheers rightly drew attention to the perilous consequences of removing English Literature as a core subject from GSCE requirements in Wales: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-41043551 I was asked to share my two penneth in a BBC Radio interview for Good Evening…
Alan Garner’s The Owl Service has its 50th anniversary today!
One of the books I’ve worked with very closely during the last few years is Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. Garner’s creative re-use of the tale of Lleu, Blodeuwedd, and Gronw from the Welsh Mabinogion made it a prime candidate…
A Medieval Greek Arthurian Poem: The Old Knight
I’m in Greece right now, enjoying the sea, and pistachios (my parents have pistachio trees in their orchard), and watermelon, and figs, and all the lovely summer things. And I thought this would be a good moment to share a…
George MacDonald and one of Tolkien’s most quotable lines
I’ve been re-reading many of the works of George MacDonald recently, in preparation for my keynote lecture at the George MacDonald’s Scotland conference at the University of Aberdeen next week (https://gmdscotland.wordpress.com/). My lecture is titled “George MacDonald and Celticity”, and…