2015 Submission Guidelines

10th Annual Scissortail Festival, April 2-4, 2015

Due to the increased popularity of the festival, the competition for a place on the program is keen. Obviously there is a limited amount of time and space available, and unfortunately, not all submissions can be accepted. Selections to the program are accepted or rejected by a committee of ECU personnel on the basis of:

Quality, Published Work (peer-reviewed journals, for example)
Freshness of Material (reading some new stuff)
Appropriateness in Subject Matter and Time Restraints (fitting into the Festival)
Meeting the Deadline
Perceived Ability to happily join in a celebratory, festival atmosphere.

If your submission is not accepted for the main program this year, we sincerely hope you will not be discouraged. We hope you will continue your writing efforts with even greater vigor, and we invite you to attend the festival to gain the benefit of reading, listening and interacting with the audience of writers, participate in events that may occur during the festival.

Even if you have been on the program in the past, please review the following guidelines before submitting (if the number of submissions warrant, we will move to 15 minutes per presenter instead of 20 minutes, as has been our tradition; and fiction writers are encouraged to excerpt their submission to fit into the time restraints (The appeal of a story may in fact be heightened by presenting a carefully selected excerpt).

A showcase of Oklahoma creative writing, the Scissortail Festival welcomes submissions from creative writers in Oklahoma and across the country. In addition to feature authors (highlighted on the flyer and press release) the festival celebrates published, established and emerging authors reading original poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

Guidelines: Please read closely and follow exactly. Please look at your calendar before submitting! Due to the increasing popularity of the festival, it is very difficult to accommodate special scheduling requests. Please do not ask. Please understand that Ada, Oklahoma is a small town with very limited public transportation and has a limited number of hotel rooms. Ada is a two-hour drive from the Oklahoma City airport, three hours from DFW (in good traffic) and two and half hours from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Scissortail Festival is unable to provide shuttle service to and from these airports, so please consider these factors before submitting.

Also:

Scissortail is a reading festival. No workshops, how-to, propaganda or pre-arranged panels are acceptable.

Reading sessions feature a mixture of authors and genre.

Sessions usually consist of 3 or 4 readers per session. Authors should plan for either 15 or 20 minutes total time at the mic (including prose) depending on how the session is scheduled. In other words, some readers will get 15 minutes, and some will get 20 minutes. Please respect your audience and fellow readers and follow your allotted time diligently.

Email submissions are encouraged. Submit: 1) complete contact information 2) the title of your program and sample/s of work to be considered – please consider the time restraints per reader

3) a paragraph-length biographical narrative summarizing publications and significant accomplishments (please write bios in 3rd person).

Deadline for submission is January 5, 2015. The schedule will be announced by February.

Send email submissions to: khada@ecok.edu. Identify “Scissortail Submission” in the subject line. (It is also a good idea to copy your submission to khadakhada@gmail.com (since email sometimes goes into the spam folder). If you prefer, you may send submissions to: Dr. Ken Hada, Department of English & Languages, East Central University, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820.

Please check your calendar before submitting. Participants are not charged registration fees. Please subscribe by email at http://www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com in order to receive notice of information regarding the festival and related events. Updates are posted at that site.