Admin Post: "Rise Above" Challenge Ends on May 10!

[dawn_felagund]

Our current challenge Rise Above ends on May 10. When I say the challenge "ends," I mean that fanworks posted after May 10 will not receive a stamp. You are welcome to continue posting challenge responses and even request prompts after May 10. These responses just won't receive participant stamps. (Stamps for comments have no due date.)

If you need a reminder what this challenge is all about:

This month's challenge Rise Above is inspired by women in the sciences. Each participant will receive a quote from a woman who has advanced the participation of women in the sciences.

See our challenges page for instructions on how to request a prompt and full challenge guidelines.

"Rise Above" fanworks that have been posted so far can be found here.

Admin Post: The SWG Reference Library Now Accepts Reprinted Articles without Peer Review

[dawn_felagund]

We recently renovated our Reference Library, including a much-needed review and update to our guidelines. One of the biggest changes we put into place is that we now accept reprints of articles/essays that have been previously published or presented. This has been an unofficial practice on the Reference Library for some time now, and in the interest of transparency, we have finally formulated formal guidelines for accepting reprinted works on our site.

We hope our Reference Library will serve as a home for fan scholarship/meta about The Silmarillion, its fandom, and writing about it. To meet this goal, we established our peer-review guidelines, but peer review is often not appropriate for a work that has already been presented or published in another venue. Often, it is complicated--or even impossible--to make changes to such texts. In other cases, the vetting process for the prior publication may be equally or more stringent than our own, which makes a second vetting a poor use of time and resources.

As such, reprinted articles and essays must be approved only by Reference Library editors. (At the moment, that is Angelica and me.) We also reserve the right to determine what venues review articles/essays adequately enough that we are comfortable bypassing peer review. Reprints will be labeled as such in the Reference Library with information on the original publication.

So what previous publications would generally count as reprints for the SWG Reference Library? Essays, articles, or other resources that initially appeared in/as a

• peer-reviewed or refereed journal or fanzine


• reputable, recognizable blog/website not owned/controlled by the author


• university thesis or dissertation


• presentation from a convention, conference, panel, course, or workshop

Please note that this list is not exhaustive, so if you have an article, essay, or resource that you don't see listed above but think might apply, please reach out. All reprints will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If you have an essay, article, or resource that fits the above and that you think would be a good fit for our Reference Library as a reprint, we encourage you to contact us with a link to or copy of the text, along with information on the original venue where it was accepted/appeared. We can be reached at loremaster@silmarillionwritersguild.org. As always, questions are also welcome on this post.

The complete guidelines for submissions to our Reference Library can be found here.