The Tolkien Society’s Annual Guest Speaker will speaking on Saturday at 7pm BST (UTC+1) via Zoom, Facebook and YouTube.
We’re pleased to announce Verlyn Flieger as our annual Guest of Honour.
Usually our Guest follows the post-AGM Annual Dinner, and is one of the most prestigious positions within the Tolkien Society’s annual calendar. Our Guests of Honour always do a talk, Q&A session, or, as is often the case with artists, a presentation. Previous guests include Christopher Tolkien, Brian Sibley, Priscilla Tolkien, John Garth, Alan Lee, Dimitra Fimi, Tom Shippey and Humphrey Carpenter. The format and the topic is of the speaker’s choosing, but our desire is to share some aspect of current thinking on Tolkien.
We cannot hold our AGM or Annual Dinner this year in person, so we are holding this online and open to the world.
Verlyn Flieger is a specialist in comparative mythology with a concentration in J.R.R. Tolkien. Retired from teaching at the University of Maryland in 2012, she is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at UMD, and she teaches courses online at Signum University. Her works include Splintered Light and Interrupted Music, the award-winning A Question of Time and Tolkien’s Legendarium (co-edited with Carl Hostetter). She has co-edited the Tolkien Studies since its foundation in 2004, and has edited the Tolkien publications Smith of Wootton Major, The Story of Kullervo and The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.
She will be speaking to us on the topic of “Waiting for Earendel“, and Society members can access this via Zoom, and the general public will be able to watch this via our Facebook page and YouTube channels.
The talk begins at 19.00 (UK-time, UTC+1) on Saturday 10th April 2021.
