Greetings, All!
This month's Folkbyte newsletter will be brief, as I only have two announcements. First, I wanted to let you know that yesterday, I successfully defended my dissertation and became a Doctor of Folklore. (Not quite a Time Lord, but I did my best.)
I was a "COVID researcher," which is shorthand in academic circles for anyone whose field work was interrupted by the pandemic. After six weeks in the field, I was sent home and wondered for a time if there was enough ethnographic data to fill a dissertation. But like those thrifty WWI and WWII housewives who managed to serve a sweet at the dinner table even when food was scarce, I wrote a war cake of a dissertation based on the research I had. My supervisor, advisors, and examiners were pleased with it, and I've been encouraged to turn the work into a book.
I also wanted to remind you that I'll be participating in the 2024 SFWA Nebula Conference this Thursday at 4:30 PDT as part of the online "Magic Systems in the Making" panel. Here's the full conference schedule. I'll be talking about superstitions, charms, curses, material culture, and other magical folklore you can incorporate into your fictional worlds.
That's all for now. I'm back to work tomorrow full steam ahead on The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore, The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore, and other projects I'll be announcing soon.
Brightest Blessings to You and Your House,
Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran
Folklore & Fiction Archives
The first five years of Folklore & Fiction dispatches and podcasts are still available at folkloreandfiction.com, and you can access them by signing up for a free account here.
Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran holds hold B.A. in Celtic Studies from the University of Toronto, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine, and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. She is also an author, poet, and musician under the name C.S. MacCath. Her long-running Folklore & Fiction Project integrates these passions with a focus on folklore scholarship aimed at storytellers, and she brings a deep appreciation of animism, ecology, and folkloristics to her own storytelling. You can find her online at csmaccath.com, folkloreandfiction.com, and linktr.ee/csmaccath.
© 2025 Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran. All rights reserved unless Creative Commons licensing is specifically applied. To read the full "Copyright Statement and Usage Guide," visit https://csmaccath.com/copyright.