20th Annual Scissortail: The Poster

21st Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma presents 

Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition 

Fiction: 1st Place $250; 2nd place: $150; 3rd Place $100
Poetry: 1st Place $250; 2nd place: $150; 3rd Place $100
20 Honorable Mention Awards of $25 each

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.

* 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)

* Work may be submitted through conventional mail or email.

DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before Friday, February 7, 2025. Email entries must be sent via email by 11:59 p.m. on February 7, 2025. There will be no exceptions.

Recognition: The names of winning writers will be posted 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) 

2024 Undergraduate Writing Contest Finalists

First Place: Glory Curda, Oklahoma City University
"7:00 am Outside Gallup NM":

Second Place: Kaiya Jones, Oklahoma City University
"Their Voice"

Third Place: Cathlena Spencer, East Central University
"A Safe Space to Land"

Honorable Mentions:
Ben Payne, East Central University
"Boys Being Boys"

Ryn Swinson, Cameron University
"Birth Mother"

Kaley Muse, Cameron University
"Lavender Fields in Heaven"

From the Director - Welcome 2024

Welcome to the 19th Annual Scissortail Festival. I am still amazed that decent people from all over the country travel to Ada, Oklahoma to read and listen to others read. But perhaps I shouldn’t be amazed. Perhaps reading to each other, and being read to, is a deep need that too often goes unfulfilled. Maybe Scissortail allows for that need to be met. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about history, about my time with this festival, about your experience with this festival. Thank you for contributing to the festival – 19 of you for the first time – and to all the returners, both presenters and especially audience members. Thank you for making good history with me, with us all.

The History We Are

Hear the crow call.
See the crow flap
against morning light,
wrens secluded
in wintered branches,
a jogger in purple
moves around the lake
in careful trot,
two mallards in shallows.

The sycamores are white.
The cedars are green.
There is no breeze.
Brown oak leaves cling
to what once was.
Everything hangs on
to what has been
while the crow records
the history we are.


On behalf of the many wonderful colleagues and volunteers who contribute so much to these three days, Welcome! Enjoy your time here together at ECU.

Ken Hada

19th Annual Scissortail: The Poster

 

2024: Schedule of Readings

19^th Annual: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival
April 4 - 6, 2024
East Central University
Ada, Oklahoma 

Thursday, April 4

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium 

Ky George: Gallup, New Mexico
Fire in the Pulpit
Walter Bargen: Ashland, Missouri
Down the Rabbit Hole of War
Mark Walling: East Central University
One Dalmatian 

II. 11:00 – 12: 10 Estep Auditorium

Nikki Herrin: Wayne, Oklahoma
Progression
Wendy Dunmeyer: Lawton, Oklahoma
Importance of Words
Alan Berecka: Sinton, Texas
Selected Poems 

III. 11:00 - 12:10 Regents Room

Clarence Wolfshohl: Fulton, Missouri
Lo, the Gods
Sally Rhoades: Albany, New York
When the Roses are in Bloom
Josh Grasso: East Central University
The Domovoi

IV. 11:00 – 12:10 Boswell Chapel

Lyman Grant: Harrisonburg, Virginia
November Constellation
Keely Record: Tulsa, Oklahoma
From Here
Brady Peterson: Belton, Texas
Letters from the Edge of the Round Earth 

*** Lunch ***

19th Annual Scissortail: Featured Authors

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE Grant Fellow with the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.

Coggin was awarded the Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, aand Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have been publishedin POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, SWWIM, Lavender Review, About Place Journal, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley where they tend to wild ones and each other.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children's literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR's "Focus: Black Oklahoma" monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film "Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later." Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Julliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include, Opa's Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams; new and collected poems, 1994-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Forthcoming titles include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse, with Joel Daniel Phillips, a children's biography of Ralph Ellison, and a series of books on The Black Rodeo. Lansana's work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art and Oklahoma Humanities, is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.

 

Steve Yarbrough is the author of twelve books, most recently the novel Stay Gone Days. His other books are the nonfiction title Bookmarked: Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, the novels The Unmade World, The Realm of Last Chances, Safe from the Neighbors, The End of California, Prisoners of War, Visible Spirits and The Oxygen Man, and the short story collections Veneer, Mississippi History and Family Men. His work has been published in several foreign languages, including Dutch, Italian, Japanese and Polish, and it has also appeared in Ireland, Canada, and the U.K. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the California Book Award, the Richard Wright Award and the Robert Penn Warren Award. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The Unmade World won the 2019 Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.

The son of Mississippi Delta cotton farmers, Steve is currently a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. He has two daughters – Lena Yarbrough and Antonina Parris – and is married to the Polish writer Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough.  They divide their time between Boston and Krakow.

Steve is an aficionado of jazz and bluegrass music, which he plays on guitar, mandolin and banjo, often after midnight.