It's On!

As of 9:30 this morning, March thirty-first, 2011, the Sixth Annual the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival is under way!

If you are attending the Festival and have heard you something you like, please leave a comment here so that the authors and everyone else can know what you think. Just click on the comment button below to leave a comment and read the comments left by others.

Welcome to Scissortail, 2011

Dear Authors and Guests of the 6th Annual Scissortail Festival,

Lately I’ve been reading Shinkichi Takahashi’s Triumph of the Sparrow. Many of his poems were influenced by Dadaism, in part, a protest against the barbarism of war and other absurdities. In his search for something beyond the follies all around us, Takahashi unites this artistic movement with zen and is thus able to penetrate the soul of his readers, uniting them with the bliss of nature or the marvels of the everyday. As I prepare for our 6th annual Scissortail festival, I feel more than ever, a desire based in a deep need, to gather together as writers, as readers, as co-participants in the search for the peaceful soul, somehow ordered by the pursuit of art. So much does not make sense around us, and in our ever-fragmented world, marred by misuse of technology and shallow forays into pretense and simplistic solutions, we need to rendezvous, we need to be inspired, we need to listen to the soul seeping through the words of our fellow creators among us.

Welcome back to Ada and to East Central University. To the first-timers, we hope you discover the worthwhile endeavor of listening to each other, beyond ego and apart from a craving for petty dominance. To the returners, it is always great to see you again, to hear of your progress, to feel how words are shaping you at this time of your life.

Many have volunteered time and effort to make this event possible. I thank them as I thank authors and guests for traveling to Ada to be part of this good gathering of folks. To the festival!

Ken Hada, Director
March 28, 2011

Winners of the 7th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

Congratulations!

Fiction Winners
First Place : Erika Salmon. “The Soldier.” Tahlequah High School
Second Place: Paige Warren. “Stolen.” Norman North High School
Third Place: Kayla Crego. “Eight Arms to Hold You.” Norman North High School

Fiction Winners Honorable Mentions:
Lindsey Weir. “Alone at Night.” Westmoore High School
Kaitlyn Hawk. “A Horrible and Tragic Tale.” Coalgate High School
Rajat Ghosh. “Barrier.” Norman North High School
Shelby Seaquist. “Flowers and a Feather.” Pryor High School
Shealy Davis. “Bridge of Fear.” Strother High School
Kathryn Shauberger. “Neighborly Duties.” Norman North High School
Zach Shaffer. “The Awakening.” Tahlequah High School
Isabelle Gronlund. “Pictures of Ash.” Norman North High School
Lucy Mahaffey. “Shout.” Norman North High School
Samantha Jo Smith. “Katie.” Collinsville High School

Poetry Winners
First Place : Kenna Stanton, “To Set The Table” Lawton High School
Second Place: Chelsea Elam, “Hotel Room” Norman North High School
Third Place: Arthur Dixon, “Sheets and Blankets” Ardmore High School

Poetry Winners Honorable Mentions:
Anna Marie Saunders, “Tribute to Kathryn” Edmond Memorial High School
Shelby Talley, “ Miss Mae” Coalgate High School
Sarah Capps, “The Geisha” Norman North High School
Cheyenne H. Ballard, “Wilt of the Rose” Shawnee High School
Casey Cowan, “In life we yearn to find” Heavener High School
Nicole Roten, “The Dust Bowl,” Lawton High School
Katie Hill, “Sandcastles,” Norman North High School
Aubrey Mackey, “Aunt Lois’s Bible” Coleman High School
Karen L. Longo, “Rose” Broken Bow High School
Ninoshka Rivera-Roldan, “Mystified Nature” Lawton High School

2011 R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest -- First Prize in Fiction

The Soldier
by Erika Salmon, Tahlequah

I was four years old and Maggie thirteen when we made the journey together from Paddington Station. It was July of 1940. Since we went to our grandparents’ country estate in Kent nearly a year after the Blitz, from that point on most of my childhood memories are pleasant. Along with the Anderson shelter, the constant worries about air raids were left behind in London, and life settled. We attended the small school a mile from the house. The first few weeks, I woke up every night crying for home and mum. I sniffled into my pillow until Maggie came to comfort me. It was five more years before, in May of 1945, we returned home.

While Maggie and I have had our disagreements, we agree on one thing without a shadow of a doubt: that what changed our lives most during the war was not being evacuated—we were fortunate to stay with our grandparents, not strangers. It was not the air raids. Unlike countless other families, our father came back to a still standing home after the war. It was not the rationing. The farm produced plenty. It was not even living without our parents for a large part of our childhoods. Whatever else from my youth is lost from my memory, I will never forget February 23, 1942, a turning point in my life.

2011 R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest -- Second Prize in Fiction

뺐어: Stolen 

by Paige Warren, Norman North

Mid-west North America
2010

Her eyes were amber. That was the first thing I remembered after waking. Sun’s deep, screaming eyes—once so proud but timid now—woke me from dreams and brought me back here to this place called reality—or whatever it was. The fear and uncertainty hardly hidden amongst her crying eyes and the far away expression painted in every feature of her face was what shook me awake from the darkness of inexorable sleep. The moment our eyes met, Sun’s disheveled appearance confirmed what my subconscious had been trying to tell me all along: we had been lost—or worse—stolen.

“Where are they taking us?” Sun looked at me with such dignity in her glossy eyes, amidst all the tears. My thoughts flickered to the clouded scenes of home: the perfect coastal town of Haenam was barely held together in my mind—I could remember the pristine ocean waves and the mix and match of traditional and modern Korean homes but all the faces of the many I loved were scarred by my inability to remember the last time I saw all of them.

2011 R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest -- Third Prize in Fiction

Eight Arms to Hold You
by Kayla Crego, Norman North

Doris loved the river like an old friend, and heard the trickling of water against rock as a melodic voice speaking in a language only she understood. When the river flooded, it was a quarrel, and the friends were treated with a mutual cold shoulder, and when waters receded and tempers cooled, friends forgave. The river was feisty, but generous, and Doris knew no greater joy than taking the short walk from her house with her husband, down a gently sloping path and past frolicking families to the water's edge. There she would sit on her favorite bench with a newspaper or paperback novel or whatever craft she felt best busied her hands while her husband fished or showed the local children his newest toy boat. They all called him “gramps,” though the couple, as far as anyone could tell, had no children or grandchildren. It had been sixteen months since Doris had been to the river.