The Tolkien Professor, Dr. Corey Olsen

The Tolkien Professor podcast series has been nominated for a 2012 Parsec Award!

What are these awards, you ask?  According to the founders, a Parsec Award is given to exemplary speculative fiction, fantasy and scifi podcasts in a variety of subcategories each year.  Dr. Olsen and the team are thrilled to learn that we’ve been given a nod and are happy to join the rank of 2012’s contenders for the Fan/News category.

Thanks to all of you who may have suggested The Tolkien Professor!

The long awaited next installment of Faerie and Fantasy 25 is available! Download it here, or listen on iTunes.

The Mythgard Institute has just opened the doors on a new college prep opportunity for high school students interested in the books of both J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.  Mythgard Academy will offer three week online courses that will offer students not only a chance to go in-depth with their favorite works but to also experience a college lecture hall and practice their writing – with individual tutoring.

The Mythgard Academy Summer Camp takes it one step further by offering students a unique chance to  study on-campus at Washington College.  Participants will be asked to write about either The Fellowship of the Ring or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – both the book and the film adaptation – using iPads and new media tools.

Learn more about both at Mythgard’s site.  If you have younger fans of the Tolkien Professor in your household, we’re sure they are going to love it!

Faerie and Fantasy 24 continues with George McDonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin”, Chapters 11-20. Download it here.

At long last, Silmarillion Seminar Episode 21, “Random Things Mandos Said at a Party” (the second session on Chapter 19, “Of Beren and Luthien”) is now available for download.

Recently, The Tolkien Professor has been very busy launching a brand new option in higher education.  Like its sister school, the Mythgard Institute, the newly founded Signum University aims to bring top-notch teaching to students everywhere using innovative educational technology – at a price that people can actually afford.

Learn more about Signum University.  We’re sure you’ll love what you see!

The Mythgard Institute, in conjunction with the Middle-earth Network, is proud to announce the long-awaited launch of the Riddles in the Dark prediction game attached to the RITD podcast by Corey Olsen and Dave Kale.

The prediction game brings together guest analysts, hailing from some of the most popular Tolkien websites and podcasts on the Internet.  These experts will take part in competitive speculation about how The Hobbit will make its transition from beloved book to epic film every two weeks!  All guesses will be aggregated in a giant prediction grid – and updates will be posted to the Mythgard site, Riddles in the Dark pages and Tolkien Professor iTunes feed.

Learn more in the News section over at mythgard.org!

Faerie and Fantasy Class 23 (Princess and the Goblin, Chapters 1-10) is now available for download. See? I’m getting the production gears in motion again!

Silmarillion Seminar #19, “Fingolfin, We Hardly Knew Ye” (Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin), is now available for download. You can get it on the iTunes feed, as usual, or you can also find it on my The Silmarillion Seminar page!

A brand new chapter in the tolkienprofessor.com‘s history is opening in front of you, dear visitors!

With the help of Mythgard Institute, my recently-launched school for the study of Tolkien and related works, I have just completed a complete redesign of the Tolkien Professor website.  I think you’ll love it, but let me give you the tour!

To start, content will now be easier to find than ever before with spaces for featuring new materials as well as old favorites.  There will also be more opportunities to share exclusive content, especially as the three-fold happenings of the 75th anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the publication of my Exploring The Hobbit book and the premiere of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit film. An exciting 2012 for Tolkien fans, no doubt!

So poke around, have a look at the new tolkienprofessor.com and get comfy – and definitely stay tuned for more updates, announcements and much, much more!