Tolkien Festival in Missouri This Autumn

In honor of the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit and the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the Springfield-Greene County Library (Missouri) is hosting a series of fall programs called Tolkien Festival 2012. It begins with celebrations of World Hobbit Day in September and concludes with large screen showings of the LOTR films in early December. Our featured speaker on November 17th is Justin Noetzel, a Tolkien scholar from Saint Louis University. Justin worked with Tom Shippey at SLU before Dr. Shippey retired. He will be speaking about Tolkien’s Life and Inspiration in the afternoon and about the LOTR films and what we can expect to see in The Hobbit that evening.

Here is the link to the schedule, which features beautiful art by David Wenzel, illustrator of The Hobbit graphic novel. (http://www.davidwenzel.com/home.html);