Dr Dimitra Fimi writes: Douglas A. Anderson, author of the celebrated Annotated Hobbit, will be joining the Discussion Board of UWIC’s Fantasy online course as a special guest. I am thrilled that my students will have the opportunity to debate key texts and ideas in Fantasy Literature with one of the world specialists in the genre. The course, entitled: Fantasy Literature: Tales Before and After Tolkien, starts on Monday 23rd May and there are still a few last places available! For more information click here.

Mike Foster writes: J.R.R. Tolkien scholar Douglas A. Anderson will present “Annotating The Hobbit & Other Adventures” at Bradley University’s Neumiller Chapel in Bradley Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, in Peoria, Illinois. Bradley adjunct English professor Mike Foster will be the moderator of the free lecture. Anderson is the award-winning author and editor of The Annotated Hobbit, Tales Before Tolkien, Tales Before Narnia. Seekers of Dreams, and, with Verlyn Flieger, an expanded critical edition of Tolkien’s On Fairy-stories. He is also an editor of the academic journal Tolkien Studies. Foster has been the North American representative of the Tolkien Society since 1995. From 1974 until his retirement in 2005, he taught a literature course on Tolkien at Illinois Central College. In 2006 and 2008, he taught an upper-division version of that class at Bradley University.