November Events For Myth Lovers
George Frederic Watts: The Minotaur is in the public domain.
Virtual Events
On Sunday November 1, take a virtual walk through the Minoan Palace of Knossos in Greece and learn about the myths connected to the minotaur. Tickets are $15.
On November 1, join the Anglesey Druids , a group that celebrates the culture, literature, the arts and indigenous Celtic spirituality, for their annual ceremony to awaken Mari Lwyd Môn from her seasonal slumber. The Welsh folk custom entails the use of a horse's skull mounted on a pole and carried by an individual hidden under a sackcloth.
On November 5 listen to a presentation from Kim Hudson, who explored what a Virgin’s Journey might look like (as a feminist version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey) in her screenwriting book The Virgin’s Promise: Writing Stories of Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening.
On multiple dates between November 5 and November 7, street kids tell their stories in the online performance Iizuka's Polaroid Stories, which was inspired in part by Ovid's Metamorphoses. Tickets start at $5.
On Thursdays starting November 5 through December 10, meet virtually to discuss Clarissa Pinkola Estés book Women Who Run With the Wolves, which analyzes ancient stories to unearth the cultural assumptions that restrain women’s creativity, among other things.
Mabel Dorothy Hardy’s “Odin fighting with the wolf Fenrir.” Public Domain.
On November 7, you can explore the Olympic Games and the other sacred games of Ancient Greece in an interactive online workshop. Tickets $15.
On November 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, and 17 Margaret Atwood will discuss her new poetry collection Dearly in online events around the country held in conversation with many interesting people ranging from the author Madeline Miller to New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul.
On November 9, learn about Native Amazonian drawings with themes ranging from geometrical designs, anthropomorphic figures, landscapes, and mythological beings.
November 10, join the New York Public Library for an online discussion of Octavia Butler’s Kindred.
From November 10 - 14, watch The Labyrinth, a series of five short plays inspired by the remarkable women who encountered Theseus and Jason. Tickets start at 22.15 pounds.
On November 12, Tamar Williams, Gary Cordingley, James Canvin, Marion L and Clare Goodall will tell Norse myths for a story night with Word Spun Zoomed.
In an online activity on November 12 adapted from the project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-2021), children with autism learn what happens when Hercules reaches a curious, multi-sensory place.
On November 14, the classics scholar Amanda Potter will host an online creative writing workshop using characters and themes from Greek mythology as inspiration.
Also on November 14, LP Kindred, facilitator of Voodoonauts -- an Afrofuturist Literature Workshop -- and co-founder of the Clarion Ghost Class, will host a Clarion West Writer’s Workshop class on “Repurposing the Self, Clichés, Tropes, and Unexamined Bias for New Story.” Tickets $55.
The Brooklyn Children’s Book Fair takes place online on Saturday November 14 and will include presentations by more than thirty-five creators of storybooks, picture books, and graphic novels.
On November 15, the author Greg Bogart, PhD, MFT, will discuss how dreams and astrological symbols deliver messages of transformation. A few participants will have the opportunity to briefly share a dream along with their natal chart and transits.
On November 17, Neil Gaiman, Rob Wilkins & Rhianna Pratchett will hold the live discussion online titled “Magical Mind: The World of Terry Pratchett” at 13:00-14:00 EST.
On November 17, Dr. Kathia and Neolyth Shamanic Center will make a virtual pilgrimage through Egyptian temples, including the Theban Triad Conundrum comprised of Amun, his consort Mut, and their son Khonsu the moon god. Tickets $33.
I added the speech bubble to Marc Ryckaert’s “Luxor (Egypt): temple of Hatshepsut.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
On November 17, Bettany Hughes, the author of Venus and Aphrodite, will discuss how the goddess has endured for millennia.
On November 18, Normandi Ellis, who published translations from the hieroglyphs found in the Book of the Dead in her book Awakening Osiris, will hold a talk on “Hieroglyphic Thinking” with the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.
Join the New York Public Library for an online discussion of John Barth’s story “Lost in the Funhouse” on November 18 and of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Leaf Storm on November 19.
On November 25, the scholar Dr Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir will discuss Viking myths about valkyries. She will introduce texts recorded in medieval Iceland, which she describes as “a culture able to imagine women in all kinds of roles carrying power, not just in this world, but pulling the strings in the other-world, too.”
On November 30, author Nalini Singh will speak about her new book Archangel's Sun, in which a secret rises in the aftermath of an archangelic war, with author Sarah J. Mass.
Zoom with your friends anytime you like in a Valhalla Role Playing Game in which a group of Vikings struggle to survive a zombie outbreak. Is this Ragnarok? How will you survive? Includes everything needed to play except two six sided dice.
Emil Doepler’s Walhall, die Götterwelt der Germanen and the illustration Damaged Zombie are in the public domain.
Recurring Virtual Events
On Sunday mornings, Krista Lea will present an online meditation class that uses sound, aroma, poetry, and goddess mythology to focus on the archetype of the Divine Feminine. Tickets $11
The NY Mythology Group, which is associated with the Joseph Campbell Foundation, holds presentations and discussions about mythology related topics ranging from the Greek goddess Hecate to Carl Jung. Their events usually take place on Tuesday evenings at 8 pm EDT, and have been online since the pandemic started.
The Center for Fiction will hold a discussion group on Wednesday nights from September 16-January 6 about “ways in which pervasive themes drawn from oral tradition find their way into our collective consciousness, either perpetuated or subverted by current fiction.” Readings from authors including Octavia Butler, Catherynne Valente, Ursula LeGuin, Kelly Link, and Aimee Bender.
BSFW, or Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, meetings take place mostly online currently, but pre-pandemic were in the homes of writers mostly in Brooklyn but also on occasion Manhattan or Queens. Check out their calendar on meetup to attend their numerous writing workshops, social gatherings, meetings with editors/agents/authors, book clubs, and more. The group includes many published writers and has its own audio fiction magazine, Kaleidocast. If you post about your fetish for Olympian gods on their Facebook group feed, they (probably) won’t judge.
EREWHON BOOKS, a publisher focusing on novel-length works of speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy, and related genres, holds readings usually on the second Thursday each month virtually for now and in a pre-apocalypse world at its high ceilinged office of many windows in Manhattan.
Fantastic Fiction at KGB is a monthly speculative-fiction reading series held on the third Wednesday of every month virtually for now, and in a pre-apocalypse world at KGB Bar in Manhattan. Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel host the event. As one might expect from a communism-themed bar, admission is free.
The NYC Greek Myth & Classical Lit Meetup meets every third Thursday of the month at the Cloister Cafe in the East Village to discuss the work of mostly long dead authors (e.g. Aristophanes, Dante.) The group has existed for more than a decade, so the long-term participants have already earned their unofficial classics PhD’s, and we already know that anybody who would do this for fun is as hip as a person can get.
The virtual exhibit Guiding Spirits: The Radical Witches and Women of OPUS presents materials highlighting explorations of mythological witches and the occult and supernatural underpinnings of depth psychology.
World Events
"Myth.Slide1.16" by c.a.francese is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
For the Love of Fantasy has a conference scheduled for December 5 to 6.
IceCon This conference is planned to take place in Reykjavik, Iceland from November 6 to 8, 2020
Finncon Postponed until 2021
Worldcon is scheduled to take place in Washington D.C. on August 25-29, 2021. You can already buy your ticket for their convention here.
U.S. Events
Readercon, a conference in Boston for readers and writers of science fiction, postponed until 2021.
New York City Events
A seven-foot statue of Medusa holding the head of a Greek hero now stands across from the Manhattan courthouse that convicted Harvey Weinstein, the New York Post reported recently. The statue will be on view there until March. (It’s not an event, but you know, COVID. . . if you go to see this one, at least you’ll be outdoors!)
On numerous days throughout November and December, you can go on a tour of the pubs in New York. For example, one of these tours will show you where Edgar Allen Poe lived, worked, and (most importantly) drank. Tickets are $74 and include a cocktail. (Yes, just one! But you might find half off tickets for a tour here.)
Look at paintings in a Met Museum exhibition that capture the Ramayana, an epic narrative composed by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki around the fifth century B.C. Or check out Arte del mar ("art of/from the sea"), which explores the artistic exchange around the rim of the Caribbean Sea before the sixteenth century, including objects rooted in mythological narratives.
Check out the images of buddhas, bodhisattvas, tantric deities, protectors and more at the Rubin Museum’s Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room, which is open again with timed entry tickets for social distancing.
The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings usually holds events on the first Tuesday of the month at The Brooklyn Commons Cafe at 388 Atlantic Avenue. Check their website for up to date information.
Marcantonio Raimondi’s “A Bacchanal”. CC01.0 Public domain.
