scissortail creative writing festival
The 21st Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival will be held April 2-4, 2026 in Ada, Oklahoma. Calls for submissions will be posted in late October.
Saturday, September 13, 2025
21st Annual Scissortail: Featured Authors
Traci Brimhall, a University Distinguished
Professor of Creative Writing and Narrative Medicine at Kansas State
University, is celebrated for her unique poetry that intertwines the ordinary
with the surreal. She has authored five poetry collections, including the upcoming
"Love Prodigal" (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), and her work has been
prominently featured in journals such as The
New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. Brimhall's teaching experiences,
supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National
Parks Service, and Academy of American Poets, have spanned diverse settings
from farm schools to medical communities, reflecting her commitment to
fostering creative expression across varied environments.
As the
current Poet Laureate of Kansas, Brimhall has focused her initiatives on
uniting the state's agricultural heritage with literary arts. Her advocacy
includes projects like poetry cookbooks, food-based mad lib poems, and bringing
poetry to the State Fair, aiming to enrich the lives of all Kansans through
language.
Brimhall's
literary contributions extend beyond poetry to include essays published in
prestigious journals such as Georgia
Review, The Southern Review, and Prairie
Schooner. Her accolades include awards like the Barnard Women Poets Prize
for "Our Lady of the Ruins," and her work has been recognized in Best
American Poetry anthologies.
Educationally,
Brimhall holds degrees from Florida State University (BA), Sarah Lawrence
College (MFA), and Western Michigan University (PhD). At Kansas State
University, where she directs the creative writing program and holds the
Donnelly Faculty Award in English, she continues to inspire and mentor aspiring
writers.
Her
numerous residencies and fellowships include an Artist-in-Residence position at
Bighorn Canyon through the National Parks Service and the My Time fellowship
from the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. Brimhall's scholarly pursuits also
include the Karnes Fellowship from Purdue Libraries, focusing on the unpublished
poems of Amelia Earhart.
Traci
Brimhall's career exemplifies a profound dedication to poetic innovation,
community engagement, and scholarly exploration, making her a pivotal figure in
contemporary American poetry and beyond.
Joseph Fasano is a writer and educator. He studied mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard University before changing his course of study and earning a degree in philosophy, with a focus on philosophy of language after Wittgenstein. He did his graduate study in poetry at Columbia University, working with Mark Strand, Lucie Brock-Broido, Richard Howard, and others. Beyond his Professorships, Fasano is passionate about developing inclusive learning communities outside the walls of academic institutions. As an educator, his mission is to help each student synthesize diverse fields of study to develop a unique and informed voice, a depth of attention, and a capacity to break free of reductive mindsets. His "Poetry Prompts," originally designed to help children create, have spread around the world, helping millions of people of all ages find their voices through the craft and magic of poetry.
Fasano is the author of two novels: The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry are The Last Song of the World (forthcoming from BOA Editions, 2024); The Crossing (Cider Press Review, 2018), praised by Ilya Kaminsky for its "lush drive to live, even in the darkest moments"; Vincent (2015), which Rain Taxi Review hailed as a "major literary achievement"; Inheritance (2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; Fugue for Other Hands (2013), which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award."
A
winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he serves on
the Editorial Board of Alice James Books, and he is the Founder of the Poem for
You Series, a digital space offering recitations of listeners' favorite poems
by request. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement,
The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Boston Review,
American Poets, Measure, Tin House, American Poetry Journal, The Adroit
Journal, American Literary Review, Verse Daily, the PEN Poetry Series, the
Academy of American Poets' poem-a-day program, and other
publications. It has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages,
including Spanish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian. He is
also a songwriter, and his debut album, The
Wind That Knows The Way, is available wherever music is sold or streamed.
Chera Hammons is a winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award through PEN Texas and the 2020 Helen C. Smith Memorial Award through the Texas Institute of Letters. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and formerly served as writer-in-residence at West Texas A&M University. Her work, which is rooted in love for the natural world, appears in Baltimore Review, Pleiades, Poetry, Rattle, The Southern Review, The Sun, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. Her fifth full-length poetry collection, Birds of America, is forthcoming from The Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. She lives on the windswept prairies of the Texas Panhandle. In her free time, she enjoys reading, birdwatching, spending time with her horses and donkeys, and caring for her houseplant collection, which is slowly but surely taking over her entire living space.
Friday, August 22, 2025
22nd Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest
Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition
Fiction: 1st Place: $250; 2nd place $150; Three 3rd places $100
Five Honorable Mention Certificates
Guidelines:
* All Oklahoma high school students (9th - 12th grade) are eligible.
* Poetry (up to 100 lines) or Short Fiction (up to 6,000 words) is acceptable.
* Limit 5 poems and 1 short fiction piece per student.
* All entries must be the original work of the student.
* Absolutely, any use of AI, computer-generated “work” is unacceptable!
* All entries must be neatly typed; please double-space fiction entries.
* Entries will not be returned, so keep your originals.
* No identifying marks should be on the manuscript itself, except for the title.
* Provide cover page with contact information: 1) Student’s name; 2) High School and Teacher’s name 3) Classification (senior, junior, etc.) 4) Phone number, Email and student’s mailing address. (Work submitted without a mailing address for each student will not be judged)
DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before Monday, February 16, 2026. Email entries must be sent via email by 11:59 p.m. on February 16, 2026. There will be no exceptions.
Recognition: The names of winning writers will be posted online on this website. Awards will be mailed to students as gift cards.
Poetry Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to jgrasso@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Joshua Grasso, East Central University, Dept. of English & Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820
Fiction Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to mwalling@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Mark Walling, East Central University, Dept. of English and Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820
Contest Information: Dr. Joshua Grasso (580-235-3197); Dr. Mark Walling (580-559-5440). Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Information: Dr. Ken Hada (580-559-5557)
Saturday, March 29, 2025
20th Annual Scissortail: Featured Authors
Ken Hada, cofounder of the Scissortail Festival, and director for 20 years, is honored to have been selected by his ECU colleagues to read at the 2025 festival. Ken is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including his latest: Visions for the Night and Come Before Winter, from Turning Plow Press. His previous collection, Contour Feathers (Turning Plow Press, 2021) received the Oklahoma Book Award. Other works of his have been awarded by The Western Writers of America, The National Western Heritage Museum, South Central Modern Language Association and The Oklahoma Center for the Book, and featured on "The Writer's Almanac." In addition to his poetry, Ken remains active in scholarship, writing and publishing regularly on regional writing, literary ecology and multicultural literatures. The “Ken Hada Collection” is held at the Western History Collection Library at the University of Oklahoma.
Julie Hensley is the
author of the chapbook, The Language of
Horses (Finishing Line Press), and the books, VIABLE: Poems (Five Oaks Press 2015) and LANDFALL: A Ring of Stories
(Ohio State University Press 2016). An Associate Professor at Eastern Kentucky
University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA
Program, she lives in Richmond with her husband, the writer R Dean Johnson, and
their two children.
ire’ne
lara silva, the
2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, two
chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos,
and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which
won the Premio Aztlán.ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers
Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del
Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom
Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters
Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large
for Texas Highways Magazine and is
working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body. Her first comic
book, VENDAVAL, will be released by the Chispa Imprint of
Scout Comics in April 2024. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com
2025: Schedule of Readings
20th
Annual:
Scissortail Creative Writing
Festival
April
3 - 5, 2025
East
Central University
Ada,
Oklahoma
Thursday, April 3
I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium
Woodstok Farley: Mingus Texas
The Killing of the Poet Laureate of Corpus
Christi: A Nod to Edgar Allan Poe
Julie
Chappell: Lake Keystone, Oklahoma
Watermarks
David
Meischen: Albuquerque, NM
Caliche Road Poems
2025: Scissortail Biographies
Sly Alley is a writer of poetry and short-fiction whose debut collection of poems titled Strong Medicine (Village Books Press, 2016) won the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for poetry. He writes on a vintage Royal typewriter in a fortified shack in Tecumseh, Oklahoma.
Rilla Askew is the author of five novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction. She’s received the American Book Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared in Nimrod, Tin House, World Literature Today, AGNI, and elsewhere. Askew’s novel Prize for the Fire, about Early Modern English writer Anne Askew, was a finalist for the 2023 Oklahoma Book Award. Her newest collection of stories, The Hungry & The Haunted, is published by Belle Point Press.