News from the Academy

A monthly Newsletter of announcements and upcoming events
by Sofawolf Academy — an Educational and Support Community
for Furry Storytellers.

---

Not a member yet?

🎓 Join the Academy

December 2024

Welcome to the December 2024 (and first ever) issue of News from the Academy our monthly newsletter, keeping you up to date on happenings in the community.

It has been almost six months since we soft-launched the Sofawolf Academy community, and we've been spending a lot of time preparing for 2025. Let's dig in!

Quarterly Themes

We settled on an overall Theme for 2025 of Crossroads — those moments in everyone's story where decisions are made, paths diverge, and things change irrevocably for good or ill. Whether a real place or a metaphorical construct, The Crossroads carries a rich literary tradition of dangerous possibility.

Each quarter of the year will feature a different aspect of this overall theme:

• January - March: Identity and Self-Discovery
• April - June: Life, Death and Rebirth
• July - September: Freedom and Constraint
• October - December: Legacy and Ancestry

These quarterly themes will be used to weave together the workshops, short story sprint cohorts, book club selections, and special events that run during that quarter.

With that in mind, let's take a look at what is coming up in Quarter One.

January - March Schedule

Academy Book Bork Club

Because reading is at least as important as writing when it comes to learning the craft of storytelling, we decided to launch a quarterly community reading group: Academy Bork Club.

Each quarter, we will feature three titles from fandom and fandom-adjacent authors. You can read any of them or all three of them, in whatever order you wish, but each month, we will have a public event to discuss one of the novels as a group. (There will also be discussion channels in the community ongoing throughout the quarter and beyond.)
​
​Here's the books we've chosen for January - March.

• Dog Country by Malcolm Cross (aka: Foozzzball) [Fenris Publishing] [Amazon]
• Price of Thorns by Tim Susman [Furplanet] [Amazon]​
• The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher [Argyll Productions] [Amazon]​

You can read whichever you like in whatever order you wish, but each month, we will have a public event to discuss one of the novels as a group. There will also be discussion channels in the community ongoing throughout the quarter and beyond.

During March, we will be scheduling live moderated events with each of the authors to answer questions submitted by readers and provide insight into the process they took in writing them.

More information about each book will be listed in the community beginning January 1.

All of this will be Free to Academy members (for now...)

Short Story Sprints

With the success of the first Short Story Sprint Cohort we ran in September & October, we have decided to continue running these throughout 2025.

In keeping with the Quarter One theme of Identity and Self-Discovery we chose the following two sub-themes for the two Sprint Cohorts:

• January - (mid)February: Deal with the Devil
• (mid)February - March: Freaky Friday

Each cohort will run for 6 weeks and will feature a series of additional constraints to follow in addition to the specified sub-theme.

Full details will be posted in the community beginning January 1. The number of participants in each cohort will be limited, so keep an eye out for Announcements.

The cohorts will also be Free to Academy members (for now...)

Other Events

We are still working out the final schedule for the quarter, but we also hope to have at least one guest speaker event, some educational materials, and perhaps even a workshop event.

Watch the Announcements channel in the Sofawolf Academy community for more information as we get it planned.

---

MFF Recap

We had an amazing Midwest FurFest, where we spent a lot of time planning 2025, but also had the pleasure of reconnecting with some of the Furry fandom’s incredible small presses. It’s been a busy Fall for them, filled with exciting new releases to keep us entertained through the long winter nights.

One of Kit's personal highlights was participating in the Upcoming Releases from Furry Small Presses panel, where Grace Reed, Runa Fjord, and Tim Susman shared excerpts from their latest novels. Not only did they introduce their new works, but they also unveiled expansive new worlds—the growing Korps Universe and the Wolftown Universe—promising even more stories to come.

SofawolfOne spent a lot of time talking to creators who are struggling to manage the constant changes in solo business: social media fallibility, managing increasing logistical costs, and diversifying their income. He's building a community for creators, solopreneurs, and independent professionals to help guide them through it all.
​
But he also got to participate in a few panels, including Building your Writing Community where Kit and SofawolfOne sparked a lot of great conversations about the nature of community and where storytellers feel the most alone.

Upcoming Conventions

Both Kit and SofawolfOne will be attending Further Confusion in January. We did not sign up to lead any panels, but we'll arrange an informal meetup for Community Members sometime during the weekend.

Watch the community Announcements channel for details.

Following Further Confusion, these are the other conventions on our radar:

• Texas Furry Fiesta (April)
• Las Vegas FurCon (April)
• Independent Book Publishers' Association (May)
• AnthroCon (July)

We're not positive we will be able to make it to all of these, but we'd like to get to as many as we can manage.

---

And that's a wrap for this inaugural edition of News from the Academy. We hope you all have an excellent holiday season, and we look forward to working with you in 2025.

If you aren't yet a member of Sofawolf Academy and would like to become a part of the action, you can sign up for free via the button below.

🎓 Join the Academy