This year’s Tolkien Symposium was different because of COVID-19. Five of their past presenters (see the list below), plus future speaker Rebecca F. Kuang, contributed to a group discussion about the value of art in times of trouble. The livestream was recorded May 16, 2020, and made available on the Youtube channel .
About the Series:
The Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature was established in 2013 at Pembroke College, Oxford, where J.R.R. Tolkien worked for twenty years as professor of Anglo-Saxon. Speakers in the series are given freedom to discuss any aspect of fantasy literature, broadly defined to include other types of speculative fiction. Our aim is to honour J.R.R. Tolkien’s legacy by promoting the study of fantasy literature.
The 2020 Symposium was virtually attended by authors:
- Kij Johnson (2013)
- Adam Roberts (2014)
- Lev Grossman (2015)
- Terri Windling (2016)
- V.E. Schwab (2018)
- Rebecca F. Kuang (TBD)
A few of my favorite quotes from the panel:
- “Readers want escapism and hope.” (Schwab)
- “Fantasy is a literature of trauma and transformation.” (Windling)
- “Fantasy prepares us for these moments.” (Grossman)
- “…not happy endings, but a sense of joy, miraculous grace.” (Windling)
- “Evil is never fully destroyed.” (Roberts)
- “Fantasy connects people to the past.” (Roberts)
- “[We are] writing new nostalgia, which includes women, Queer, non-white, etc.” (Schwab)
- “People of color have been writing about trauma [in Fantasy] for a long time…It’s not new.” (Kuang)
- “Buy from bookshop.org, not evil Amazon.” (Kuang)
I was impressed by the level of engagement of all the participants and I hope you’ll have the opportunity to watch the video at some point. Stay safe.