The Tolkien Experience Podcast

For this week's episode, we welcome someone who has been influential in Tolkien film fandom from a very early point: Clifford "Quickbeam" Broadway!

As one of several volunteers who helps contribute to the online fan community located at TheOneRing.net, Clifford hosts a live podcast each Tuesday. He also co-produced a documentary entitled Ringers, which chronicles the experiences and perspectives of fans of Peter Jackson's film adaptations, as well as the larger TORn community. This episode is full of heart, so we hope you like it!

We are elated to have with us on this episode a superstar of Tolkien scholarship, John Garth!

John is a writer who is best known to fans of J.R.R. Tolkien for his autobiographical work about the author, entitled Tolkien and the Great War. He has also written numerous articles and other works about the author, and we are delighted that he agreed to be our guest just days before his new book is released!

Listen in to hear details about his latest work, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired the Writer's Imagination! We also cover our usual Tolkien Experience questions, so we get to hear about how he became a huge Tolkien fan early on! We hope you enjoy listening!

For this episode, we are stepping away from academia and diving into the exciting worlds of writing and music with Margaret Killjoy!

Margaret is a writer of book-length fiction, short fiction, and non fiction. Perhaps our listeners will be most interested in her short story "The Free Orcs of Cascadia" published in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is also well known for her contributions to music! Our listeners may be particularly interested in her band Feminazgul. You can learn more about Margaret from her website, and even support her on Patreon (where you can also access a lot of her work as a perk of signing up).

It is our absolute privilege to welcome to the podcast a very notable writer and Tolkien scholar: Una McCormack!

A quick glance at Dr. McCormack's website and you quickly learn that she is a New York Times bestselling author and a prolific writer of tie-in novels and short and long fiction. She is an ex-academic and loves to give public talks and engage with fans of science fiction and fantasy. What is less obvious, though, is that Dr. McCormack is also very involved with FanFiction and Fan Studies! We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we loved talking with this wonderful guest!

This week we journey into the realm of fan studies and fanfiction! Our guest this week created a website dedicated to stories fanfiction inspired by The Silmarillion, and has also completed excellent scholarship on fandom: Dawn Walls-Thumma!

Walls-Thumma's website The Silmarillion Writer's Guild is a place where writers of fanfiction that were inspired by Tolkien's work can share their stories, provide feedback for each other, and find a sense of community. We really enjoyed hearing her story about setting up the website, and think it is a great place to visit! You can also find some of her insightful and important scholarship published at The Journal of Tolkien Research. We really hope you enjoy this interview as much as we enjoyed recording it.

We are so happy to share with you our interview with an up-coming Tolkien researcher, Mina Lukic!

Mina is currently a PhD student at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Her current research includes looking into how people engage with Tolkien's work using the lenses of participatory culture and cultural heritage. You can find out more about her research on her website. You can also be a part of her research by taking the survey for her study. We are so thankful to Mina for taking the time to speak with us and we hope some of our listeners will help with her research!

This month, we have a special two-part interview for you! We are elated to have as our guest the Tolkien Professor himself: Corey Olsen!

This is the second part of our interview, so please make sure to go back and listen to part one to make sure you don't miss anything!

Dr. Olsen is perhaps the most prolific and popular Tolkien podcaster in the world. His series like Exploring The Lord of the Rings, The Mythgard Academy, and The Silmarillion Film Project are recorded with live audiences each week, and he has thousands of listeners. The Tolkien Professor also has a nice book which walks readers through The Hobbit. We are so thankful that Corey could take the time to talk with us for a special, extended interview!

This month, we have a special two-part interview for you! We are elated to have as our guest the Tolkien Professor himself: Corey Olsen!

Dr. Olsen is perhaps the most prolific and popular Tolkien podcaster in the world. His series like Exploring The Lord of the Rings, The Mythgard Academy, and The Silmarillion Film Project are recorded with live audiences each week, and he has thousands of listeners. The Tolkien Professor also has a nice book which walks readers through The Hobbit. We are so thankful that Corey could take the time to talk with us for a special, extended interview. So if you enjoy this episode, make sure to subscribe and watch out for part two, coming just two weeks from today!

Our next guest on the Tolkien Experience Podcast has been the chair of the Tolkien Society since 2013.

According to the society's website, Shaun "regularly speaks about adaptations of Tolkien's works whilst passionately believing the Society needs to reach out to new audiences." We are so happy he could make time to talk with us for this episode!

Our next guest on the Tolkien Experience Podcast wears many, dare we say geeky, hats. He is the founder and CEO of Eldarion, he helps develop tools for the digital humanities, he loves ancient languages, and he is the creator of DigitalTolkien.com: James Tauber!

All of James's projects are impressive, but perhaps the one that most of our listeners will be drawn to is his work at DigitalTolkien.com. There James has been working on analyzing textual variants in The Silmarillion. He has also been working to apply the tools used in other areas of digital humanities to Tolkien's texts. You can visit his website, or listen to the episode, for more information about these projects. We are delighted that he could join us!