I am just off the phone with Prof Louise Freeman, and, yes, we will both be speaking at the Queen City Mischief and Magic Festival (QCMM) this 26-29 September. The Queen City is charming Staunton, Virginia, home to both Mary Baldwin University and the American Shakespeare Center, in the Shenandoah Valley. I couldn’t be happier or more excited. This is a super fan gathering in a beautiful city that turns itself into Hogsmeade for a weekend, a conference that has a little bit of everything and all of it fun and festive.
I trust Louise will tell you more in the coming weeks but here is my hasty introduction to those new to QCMM. From the festival’s website home page:
Wizards and muggles from near and far descend upon Staunton, Virginia for the annual Queen City Mischief & Magic. With a touch of wizardry, the historic downtown is transformed into a magical village, offering themed shopping, dining and hands-on activities for all ages.
Experiment with potions. Enjoy delicious wizard fare and libations. Try your hand at wild beast taming or wizard dueling.
Visitors are greeted by Norberta the Dragon, where selfies and costumes are encouraged. Unlock the secrets of Staunton’s bewitching historic downtown using our Mischief Map. Use Traipse, the free app, to explore our walkable downtown while solving puzzles designed to tickle every wizard’s brain… and maybe find a few treasures along the way.
This is not an academic conference, in other words, akin to either the annual MLA gathering in Albuquerque or the Chestnut Hill College colloquium. QCMM is a fan gathering with a serious egghead side-show of talks about the Harry Potter books and films, talks accessible to all levels of readers. HogwartsProfessor.com faculty will be featured this year in that aspect of the festival; I’ll be talking about ‘Why We Love Harry Potter’ and Prof Freeman, a Psychology Professor and licensed Behavior Analyst, will discuss ‘Magic and Mental Health.’ In addition to my keynote talk, I’ll be speaking at a local church and in several Mary Baldwin classrooms.
The conference House-elves have a tentative schedule and plan for venues that will be posted soon on the QCMM website, QueenCityMagic.com. My plan is to arrive Thursday afternoon, and, if at all possible, to catch a play that night at the American Shakespeare Center’s mind-blowing Blackfriar’s Playhouse.
Need I add that I hope to see you there? ‘Not One, but count ’em, Two HogwartsProfessors!’ It promises to be a lot of fun, a feast in fact with a significant helping of quality idea-sharing about the Hogwarts Saga — with a side order of Cormoran Strike — followed by dessert with the Bard — and drinks later at the Hogs Head with other serious readers. I can’t wait.
I learned at the Roanoke Generic Magic Festival in 2017 and its more than 8,000 participants that, indeed, ‘Virginia is For Wizards.’ Join Prof Freeman and me in Staunton 26-29 September 2019 for a fan conference that is free, city-wide (as in ‘check out all the blocked off streets!’), and chock-full of exciting vendors, venues, and visiting Wizard magi. All you need to do is show-up, and, yes, you can bring the whole famn damily in Muggle or wizard regalia, and, of course, you’ll have the time of your lives!
Yesterday Rowling broke her Twitter platform silence of eight months with a post and a retweet of a PotterMore posting about the new logo and tagline for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ (‘
I have no idea how these stories emerge, but to set the record straight once and for all: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a stage play, it was conceived and written as a stage play, it was always intended to be a stage play and nothing else, and there are absolutely no plans for it to become a movie, a novel, a puppet show, a cartoon, a comic book series or Cursed Child on Ice.
(1) The excitement about these events which even we are obliged to note are of no importance whatsoever, the change in logo-tagline of a Broadway play and an author’s return to a social media platform (!), testifies to the currency and vitality of Harry Potter’s status as the global shared text.
(2) If any conclusions are to be drawn from the JKRowling.com twin postings on top of the return to Twitter, my first guesses would be (a) it’s a business decision to use the tweeting platform with more than 14 million followers to highlight marketing events representing no little investment (how much do you think it cost to pull off that Times Square event about essentially nothing beyond reviving interest in a smash hit that may be showing signs of jumping the shark? To make the logo square with books and film logo?) and, (b) Rowling herself may be not totally on board with this. That reposting on her website of the 2017 denial of a movie production in the offing (2026?) sounds a bit like a ‘note to self’ (and to the world) that she is not really a prisoner of Rowling, Inc.’s mercenary concerns.
(3) Does anyone out there doubt that eventually, perhaps as with Tolkien “well after the author’s demise,” this play will be adapted into a movie and that there will be a Harry Potter movie re-booting, as well as a television series, opera, and Ice-Capades? If Christopher Tolkien couldn’t stop it, Rowling won’t be able to, and, given her charity concerns and commitments, I have to wonder at how long she will hold out against pressure externally from Warner Brothers and internally from Lumos and Volant.
I have also been reading the Father Anselm novels of William Brodrick, an Augustinian monk become barrister become novelist. If P. D. James wrote Brother Cadfael mysteries as historical thrillers, you’d have the sort of book Brodrick writes. The language and questions explored are relatively magisterial compared to Christie and Rowling — and the plotting and slow release are comparable to those two, which is to say, “very, very good.” I have read four of the six Anselm novels and am looking forward to reading the fifth, The Discourtesy of Death.
I discovered this morning that Brodrick has written two more novels, Summary Justice and Blind Defense, which I have ordered. I have done so because it occurs to me that these novels have a lot in common with the Cormoran Strike mysteries, enough in common that reading and discussing them here at HogwartsProfessor might be a healthy exercise while we wait for Strike5, a novel I fear may be several years away (Rowling’s retreat from the public sphere since January may be a sign of her getting down to work on her screenplay and novel commitments, or, just as likely, it may mean she is taking time off to work on personal issues rather than writing).
The five points of correspondence?
I’ll allow that the last point is a little weak.
So, here’s my challenge. I am going to start discussing the first Benson and De Vere novel, Summary Justice, on 1 October. You have all of September to buy and read the book. I will restrict conversation here to the first book for two weeks; after 14 October I will begin posting on Blind Defence with speculation about Forced Confessions. I hope, of course, that you will join me on this adventure so I am not talking to myself. And you can be sure HogwartsProfessor will continue to be the home of the best discussion of all things Rowling and Galbraith, especially with respect to Strike5.
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