We are delighted to announce that Booker-prize winning author Marlon James will deliver the seventh annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.

The lecture will take place at 6pm on Tuesday, 26th February, at the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College. Please register for a free ticket here.

Marlon James is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Book of Night Women, and John Crow’s Devil. A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker Prize, the American Book Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Night Women won the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the NAACP Image Award. Marlon James is a professor at Macalester College in St Paul. He divides his time between Minnesota and New York.

Jame’s new novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, is the first part of a new fantasy trilogy first conceived as a response to J.R.R. Tolkien. It will be published in the UK on February 28th.

You can follow Marlon James on Twitter, and pre-order a copy of his novel here.

If you have any questions about the upcoming lecture, please contact us.

The lecture is kindly sponsored by The Pembroke College Annual Fund and The Kadas Family Charitable Foundation.

Photo by Mark Seliger

We were blessed to have Victoria Schwab visit Pembroke on May Day, and deliver the sixth Tolkien lecture, titled ‘In Search of Doors’.

A few photos from the event:

We are delighted to announce that Victoria “V.E.” Schwab will be delivering the sixth annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.

The lecture will take place at 6.30pm on Tuesday, 1st May, at the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College. Please register for a free ticket here.

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the #1 NYT, USA, and Indie bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her work has received critical acclaim, been featured by EW and The New York Times, been translated into more than a dozen languages, and been optioned for TV and Film. The Independent calls her the “natural successor to Diana Wynne Jones” and touts her “enviable, almost Gaimanesque ability to switch between styles, genres, and tones.”

Find out more about our speaker on her website.

If you have any questions about the upcoming lecture, please contact us here.

We were delighted to welcome Susan Cooper to Pembroke College on Thursday, and listen to her inspiring talk on fantasy literature, ‘A Catch of the Breath’.

You can also download the talk as a podcast.

Write-up: SF critic and publisher Cheryl Morgan

We are delighted to announce that Susan Cooper will be delivering the fifth annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.

The lecture will take place at 6.30pm on Thursday, 27th  April, at the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College. Please register for a free ticket here.

Susan Cooper is best-known as the author of fantasies for children and young adults, notably the five-book sequence The Dark is Rising, whose awards included the Newbery Medal and two Carnegie Honours. At Oxford she was the first woman to edit Cherwell, and she worked as a reporter for the Sunday Times before marrying an American and moving to the USA. Her books have been translated into 25 languages and she has also written adult non-fiction, a Broadway play and Emmy-nominated screenplays. In 2012 Susan was given the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for her “significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens” and in 2013 she received the World Fantasy Award for life achievement.

Find out more about our speaker on her website.

If you have any questions about the upcoming lecture, please contact us here.

In 1931, on a cold dark evening in Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien gave a lecture on the art of language invention and the relation between myth and language to the Samuel Johnson Society at Pembroke College.

In 2016 Tolkien scholars Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins came to Pembroke to give a talk on Tolkien’s essay, 85 years later, on the exact same location and date.

Earlier this year Dimitra and Andrew published the first ever critical study of the essay, reproducing it alongside a new essay and drafts from Tolkien’s manuscripts, accompanied by detailed editorial notes and introductory material.

Continue reading →

Lev Grossman delivers the Third Annual Pembroke Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, May 13th, 2015.

Lev Grossman, 2015

Photographs by Gabriel Schenk and Rob Judges (last two).

The photograph of Lev Grossman outside Pembroke recreates this photograph of J.R.R. Tolkien outside Pembroke.

We are delighted to announce that Lev Grossman will be delivering the third annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College Oxford.

The lecture will take place at 6.30pm on Wednesday, 13th  May, at the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College. Admission is free, but please sign up here if you wish to attend.

Lev Grossman is a novelist and journalist. As a novelist, he is best known for writing the critically acclaimed Magicians Trilogy, comprising The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), and The Magician’s Land (2014). The series has topped New York Times best-selling lists and there are plans to make it into a television series. As a journalist, Lev has written for The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. He has been the Book Critic for Time since 2002.

Find out more about our speaker on his website.

If you have any questions about the upcoming lecture, please contact us here.