Verlyn Flieger — Spiderweb Alley

In Spiderweb Alley, a professional folklorist and his girlfriend drive into remote seacoast country in search of storytellers who maintain an oral storytelling tradition untouched by modern life, and they find a place “where the stories are real” . . . and so are the perils.

Verlyn Flieger is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, where for 36 years she taught courses in J. R. R. Tolkien, medieval literature, and comparative mythology. She is the author of five critical books on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien— Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World; A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie (winner of the 1998 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies); Interrupted Music: the Making of Tolkien’s Mythology; Green Suns and Faerie: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien; and There Would Always Be a Fairy Tale: More Essays on Tolkien (winner of the 2019 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies). Her fiction includes A Waiter Made of Glass: Poems and Stories, and a modern reimagining of the King Arthur legend in Arthurian Voices. Her most recent book, Spiderweb Alley, is the first volume in a series of connected novels called The Elverie Road.