Welcome to the HPFT bulletin, where you can find all of our major monthly announcements and information about upcoming events! This month, we've also got some information for authors in light of the HPFF shutdown.

If you're new, first and foremost: welcome to HPFT! It's awesome to have you with us.   HPFanficTalk is a forum/archive - the forum is Harry Potter-themed (including a year-long house cup), but we talk about other fandoms, too, and the archive is multi-fandom/OF.   We have a strong culture of support for other writers and feedback here, including a story help section, challenges, and reviewing events, so if you're a writer, you've come to the right place.

A quick rundown to help you get started here on the forums: please post in the 'Welcome to HPFT' topic +here to say that you've read over the rules and understand them. You can specify your house in that post or in our sorting ceremony +here - once you do, we'll sort you into the right group so you can see a common room that only people in your house are allowed to see. You're welcome to post in your common room and/or in our introductions forum +here to introduce yourself if you'd like, and you may also find our +FAQs helpful.

Enjoy your stay!

Hufflepuff: 3394.5

Ravenclaw: 2090

Gryffindor: 1886.5

Slytherin: 1570

We're very sad to announce that @BlackPixie is stepping down from their position as Slytherin prefect. Hayden has done an amazing job and is a wonderful member of Slytherin house. We're very happy, however, to announce that @just.a.willow.tree will be stepping up to become a prefect for Hufflepuff House - Eva's been incredibly active since joining the site late last year, and we're excited to have her on the team!

Thank you, Hayden! Enjoy your new role, Eva!

We'll be included a proper announcement in May's newsletter, but we wanted to give a quick shout out now to @Levana, @victoria_anne, and @Slytherinchica08, who will be joining the team - Maggie and Bianca as Muggle Liaisons, and Erica as a prefect.

We're reopening staff/prefect applications!

Rather than post applications whenever a position opens up, we post an application using for all site staff roles every three months. Any positions that need to be filled over the following three months are filled using responses to that application, so if you're interested in joining the staff or prefect team, you should absolutely apply. You're welcome to apply to as many roles on the application as you're interested in, and we don't have any restrictions based on post count or time you've spent as a member.

You can find the application +here. If you would like to apply, please do so by April 11, 11:59pm GMT.

If you'd like to review the full breakdown of responsibilities/more details about how we fill staff/prefect positions, you can find a blog entry about it +here. Thank you!

As many of you know, HPFF announced that it will be closing its doors at the end of April. We know that many of our members - existing, returning, and new alike - have used the site over the many years that it's been active, and we've discussed as a staff how best to help everyone through the transition.

We'll be posting more details in the coming days with more details, but the first thing to watch out for is this:

• @toomanycurls has been working on a way for us to transfer all of your HPFF reviews pretty quickly and painlessly. We've tested it out on several stories, and it works. She's putting the final touches on it now, and we should be rolling it out in the next few days. When we post the topic, we'll post announcements on the forum, archive, and social media, so just make sure you're checking in on one or more of those spaces if that's something you're interested in.

In more minor news, we've added a preferred pronoun field to forum profiles. It's totally optional, but if you'd like to fill it out, you're very welcome to.

We know a lot of members are transferring stories over from HPFF, and we're psyched to see them! We do want to emphasize that while HPFT also has a moderated queue, we do have very different rules, so we strongly encourage you to read them over +here. To give a couple quick highlights (including some things that aren't rules but are more cultural):

• We like diversity, including (but not limited to) sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, and disability.
   
• While our archive is moderated and there are some things that we don't allow, we're fairly permissive in what we do allow in terms of sexual content as well as issues like self-harm. Please check out the archive site guidelines for details, but if you've got some fairly graphic content (including content that wasn't allowed on HPFF), don't automatically assume it won't be accepted.
   
• As many of you know, we have an open queue - i.e., you can submit as many chapters to the queue at once as you'd like. (Truly - as many as you'd like. If it's easiest for you to put 100 chapters in at once, that's totally fine.)
   
• As mentioned above, our archive is multi-fandom. We don't accept Disney-based material (other than parodies) for legal reasons, but we'll accept fanfiction from just about any other fandom as well as original fiction.
   
• We're happy to add tags for any fandom/character/ship that has at least one story on the archive. If you have a story written that requires one or more of those tags that we don't have yet, just post in the Tag Request thread  +here. Your friendly neighborhood admin will add them for you.

We'd also like to mention to people who participated in the hate speech feedback thread early in March that we really appreciated their feedback! We've been discussing the results as a staff and will be announcing some changes in May.

Camp NaNo is here! Check out the Crazies' Cafe +here to participate. We're also still in the process of our Fic Feud event - we can't wait to see what participants come up with!

Our first Head Student this month has been incredibly active on both the forums and the archive since she joined in January. She's posted some very long and thorough reviews, a few terrific stories, and between her status updates, game posts, and general contributions to discussions, she's a wonderful presence around the site. Please give it up for...

@Levana!

Our second Head Student this month also joined the site in January, and she's also already been an amazing presence in the community. Our aurors have loved coming across her stories in the queue since then, and she's also been very active in games, discussions, and status updates. Please join us in congratulating...

@Phoenix Potioneer!

Congratulations again to you both, and thank you for being such wonderful members of the community. Please PM me with which of your stories you'd like us to feature next month!

For this month’s Order of Merlin award, the Prefects have chosen our wonderful, hardworking Muggle Liaison Assistant. Please join me in congratulating… RoxiMalfoy!

You know her for her mastery of emoji usage and general enthusiasm, but we’d also like to recognize Deana for her hard work as one of our Muggle Liaisons. She works very hard to help keep our social media active and up to date, including recently updating our SnapChat bitmoji to a rather friendly Harry as a new way to interact with our members.  She’s also done a great job of being active amongst not just her fellow Slytherins by helping with some of their common room activities, but across the site as a whole by greeting new members and spreading the love. Her consistency and her activity is definitely noticed and much appreciated.

Thank you, Deana, for everything you do. We’re very lucky to have her amongst our staff!

 - the prefects

April's SotM goes to @Crimson Quill for her story Letter to the Lost (M)!

People didn't laugh any more, at least not in front of Sirius. Sirius craved to laugh again but the sound just wouldn't come.

Sirius Black/Caradoc Dearborn

Every month, HPFT runs Fic Night, where a staff member reads a nominated fic from one of our members.   You can check out @TidalDragon reading Easter Lily by @Veritaserum27 for March's Fic Night +here if you haven't seen it yet!

This month, we're featuring the story of the month, the fic night story, a recent head student fic, a few stories from our FROGS top threes, and a staff pick! (Click for links, though please note that some links you click on may be rated M.)

Congratulations, @banshee, @beyond the rain, @Chelts-rhj, @clevernotbrilliant, @Crimson Quill, @Felpata_Lupin, @poppunkpadfoot, @Rumpelstiltskin, and @Veritaserum27!

May 1 - The Rule of Three by @beyond the rain

May 7 - The Soulmate AU and Random Prompt Challenge by @MadiMalfoy

May 10 - The New Beginnings Challenge by @Crimson Quill

June 3 - The Angst Alone Challenge by @Margaret

June 15 - The Love, ______ Challenge by @just.a.willow.tree

July 31 - The Auror's Tale Season 4 by @StarFeather

And finally, we want to wish a very happy birthday to all of HPFT's April babies. Feel free to stop by their profiles/APs/writing journals on their special day!

1 - @abhorsen.

2 - @BlackPixie

10 - @CambAngst

11 - @Slytherinchica08

11 - @BoredOneNight

12 - @charmx

14 - @magpie

16 - @shezwriter

21 - @maraudertimes

21 - @poppunkpadfoot

21 - @SnapeLove

25 - @RoxiMalfoy

25 - @VaguelyCreativeName

awards and bulletin write-up by @abhorsen.. Order of Merlin write up by the prefects. Please remember to rehost & credit if you'd like to save your awards!