Amon Hen is the bulletin of The Tolkien Society. It is published six times a year and has been produced continually since 1972.
The bulletin includes a wide range of material from announcements and reviews to fiction, artwork and letters of comment. All members of the Society are encouraged to contribute.
The editors can be contacted through our Contact page.
Submission Guidelines
Contributions should be submitted by email to the Amon Hen editors:
amonhen [at] tolkiensociety [dot] org
As part of the submission process, submitters are required to check off their submission’s compliance with the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines. If there are any questions, please contact the Amon Hen team and they will be happy to assist.
- The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or document file format.
- Submissions must be in English.
- Where available, URLs for references shall be provided.
- The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
- Due to the size of Amon Hen, we ask that all submissions be under 5,000 words. If the article is longer than 5,000 words, it may be split across multiple issues or held for our digital publication Vingilot.
- The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements of MHRA, Chicago or MLA style.
- Please note that Amon Hen no longer accepts fan-fiction at this time.
- Amon Hen does not accept and work done through AI (artificial intelligence).
The following list describes the different types of material Amon Hen usually accepts:
- Articles — This section includes articles on Tolkien, his life and times, his works, his influence, the works of his colleagues and so on. Articles typically include a number of references to scholarly material (which should be provided inline as much as possible).
- Reviews — Reviews of books, films, theatre shows, art, websites, radio, exhibitions, anything of possible interest to readers of Amon Hen.
- Letters to the Editor — These may discuss material previously published in Amon Hen or elsewhere.
- Columns — These are for standing writers who submit consistently to Amon Hen. If you have an idea of a column please let us know.
- Poems — These should be submitted in the formatting in which the author desires to be published. We will try to keep formatting as much as possible.
- Ads — If you wish to publish an ad or upcoming event please contact the Amon Hen team. If there are any graphics, please submit them as designing an ad is not always possible for our graphics team.
- Art — Please submit with the highest quality available. (300 DPI is preferred). Make sure you let us know the title of the piece and the name which we should use.
- Other — Every once in a while, we get interesting games and items that don’t fit into one of the above categories. If you have an idea, please contact the Amon Hen team and we will try to work with you.
Queue and timeframe of publishing
Amon Hen is a bi-monthly publication that consist of 36 pages.
Unfortunately, we cannot give a timeframe for publishing when submitted. If the article is time sensitive, please let us know.
We typically have a backlog of items to choose from but try to get articles out as soon as we can, please be patient with us.
| Amon Hen Issue | Due Date |
|---|---|
| February | 10 January |
| April | 10 March |
| June | 10 May |
| August | 10 July |
| October | 10 September |
| December | 10 November |
Copyright Notice
In submitting to Amon Hen, you grant the journal full privileges of primary publication, but for most intents and purposes the writer retains copyright to the material. For exceptions and clarifications, please see the policies below.
Attribution and Usage Policies
Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium as permitted by a personal-use exemption or by written agreement of Amon Hen, requires credit to Mallorn as the original publisher.
Personal-use Exceptions
The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from Amon Hen, provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:
- Storage and back-up of the article on the author’s computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.);
- Posting of the article, or link to the article, on the author(s) personal website;
- Posting of the article, or link to the article, on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository affiliated with the author(s)’s place of employment, or other non-commercial open access publication site; and
- Posting of the article, or link to the article, on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.
- While the author retains copyright and can make most uses of the material without permission, it is suggested that they contact the editor with any further questions.
Publication Policy
Regarding copyright the Tolkien Society prefers in its publications to accept articles etc. on the basis that the authors and artists grant the Society a non-exclusive licence to publish (in any media), copy, or translate the work and to edit the work for normal production standards. This means that authors retain copyright in their article and the Society holds copyright in the volume it produces, and that should anybody or another publisher, having seen a publication volume, wish to print the article in a collection of their own (such as the publication by Walking Tree Press of a collection of Prof. Tom Shippey’s lectures, talks and papers) then the Society will direct them to contact authors for permission to do so, but that the Society retains the ability to print more copies of our volume beyond the initial print run (if required).
If a contributor is not a Tolkien Society member (and therefore unable to receive a copy of Amon Hen):
A digital “tear sheet” (photo of your work in the publication) is provided upon request. If the purchase of a hard copy is desired, please inform the Amon Hen Editorial team before the issue goes to print to ensure a copy will be printed for you. We may not be able to fulfil requests for a hard copy after the issue goes to print.
Back Issues
All members of the Society have access to the entire back catalogue of Amon Hen in the form of a digital archive. This also includes Andúril (issues 1 and 2) and The Tolkien Society Bulletin, both of which were published by the Society prior to Amon Hen.
If you are not a member of the Society, you could use the interlibrary loan service available at most public and university libraries. Alternatively you can order articles directly from the British Library. Please note that it might be cheaper to purchase back issues from the Society, but this is dependant on availability.
Subject to availability, you can order back issues from the Society. Have a look at our publications sales page.
ISSN 0306-8781