Two days ago I posted the ‘Hogwarts Professor Greatest Hits of 2024’ list with winners in the Most Popular, Best Month, Best Series, Best Podcasts, and Best Posts Not Written By Me categories as well as the post and Rowling Studies podcast I thought the most likely to be remembered as seminal, significant, or simply a signature or token of what this weblog deemed important last year in our niche of literary criticism. Yesterday Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, our Deputy Head Mistress, shared her ‘Long Overdue Thoughts and Thanks after the Wrath of Helene‘ and I know now, though it came on the last day of the calendar year, that it will be the 2024 post I remember most vividly in the years to come.
The two sure things of 2025 at Hogwarts Professor are that we will be discussing at length and in depth the new Cormoran Strike novel, The Hallmarked Man, in September and in March we will be reading and talking about Sunrise on the Reaping, the second Hunger Games prequel. Newcomers to this weblog will be forgiven if they think of our work here to be exclusively about J. K. Rowling’s artistry and meaning. Long time readers, though, are well aware of the work done here by Professor Baird-Hardy and myself about Suzanne Collins’ work; check out the Hunger Games Pillar Post and the Hunger Games category file for the exegesis of Collins’ neglected Gregor the Overlander series as well as her brilliant Mockingjay, the third of her Games trilogy and a work I think as good and in some ways better than Deathly Hallows. Elizabeth’s posts about these books, the film adaptations, as well as the music in both make her, frankly, with Lana Whited, the go-to expert on everything Hunger Games and I am very much looking forward to reading her insights about Sunrise on the Reaping in March.
Real quickly, we have three projects in the works for the coming year in addition to Sunrise on the Reaping and Hallmarked Man conversations. Having looked back at 2024, here is my sneak peek at three of this year’s coming attractions:
(1) A Hogwarts Professor conference on 30-31 July to celebrate both Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday and the exciting new developments in Rowling Studies;
(2) An online ‘Rowling Studies 101’ course, seven weeks in length, in which I will share a Lake and the Shed perspective on seven ‘Golden Threads’ that permeate everything Rowling writes and are key to grasping her artistry and meaning, her global popularity, and her controversial “biology based” feminist beliefs; and
(3) A series of new and updated books in a variety of formats to include audiobooks, bundled packages, and translations into Spanish and French.
That in addition to posts here on a daily basis and new Rowling Studies podcasts hosted by Nick Jeffery. I’m hopeful that 2025 will be the most exciting year in Hogwarts Professor’s 20+ year history, at least the busiest since the madhouse period following the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Thank you for being the audience for what we do here, and, in advance, for sharing your comments, hopes, and critique of all we do!
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