2017: Schedule of Readings

12th Annual: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

April 6-8, 2017

East Central University

Ada, Oklahoma

Thursday, April 6

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium  

Brady Peterson – Belton, Texas

From an Upstairs Window

Rebecca Hatcher Travis – Sulphur, Oklahoma

Constant Fires

Michael Dooley – Tarleton State University

Mary, Mother of …

II. 11:00 – 12: 15 Estep Auditorium

Elizabeth Raby – Santa Fe, New Mexico

A Matter of Time

Paul Bowers – Northern Oklahoma College

The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life

Dorothy Alexander – Santa Fe & Oklahoma City

Birds, Bees and Misogyny: Verse & Paragraphs

*** Lunch ***

III. 2:00 – 3: 15 North Lounge

George McCormick – Cameron University

Saints

Sarah Webb – Burnet, Texas

What the Moon Saw

Jim Benton – Ft. Worth, Texas

Poems of the Scissortail’s Nest

IV. 2:00 – 3:15 Estep Auditorium

John Morris – Cameron University

On Wickedness, Art and Solubility

Mary Anna Evans – University of Oklahoma

Only a Time Machine

Gary Worth Moody – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Upon Fevered Ground

V. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Jennifer Kidney – Norman, Oklahoma

Deadhead, Hog Farm, Grass and Other Things

William Peter Grasso – Tulsa, Oklahoma

Just a Matter of Time …

Greg Stapp – Norman, Oklahoma

Whatever Counts as Blood among Locusts

VI. 3:30 – 4:45 North Lounge

Tom Murphy – Corpus Christi, Texas

Prometheus Unbound

Carol Coffee Reposa – San Antonio, Texas

Incident at a Party

Richard Dixon – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Winding Stair

VII. 7:00 – Estep Auditorium

                       

(Musical Prelude: begins at 6:30pm)

Featuring: Patricia Hampl

(Authors’ Reception follows at Vintage 22)

Friday, April 7

VIII. 9:00 – 9:50 Estep Auditorium

Sally Rhoades – Albany, New York

Through the Layers

Rob Roensch – Oklahoma City University

Victor, Jonah, Laney

IX. 9:00 – 9:50 North Lounge

Jessica Issacs – Seminole State College

The Deer in the Corn & Other Poems

Michael Howarth – Missouri Southern State U

Scream Three Times

X. 10:00 – 10:50 Estep Auditorium

Paul Austin – Norman, Oklahoma

Portraits

Michelle Hartman – Ft. Worth, Texas

Lost Journal of My Second Trip to Purgatory

XI. 10:00 – 10:50 North Lounge

Shaun Perkins – Locust Grove, Oklahoma

The Book with the Beacon Lights

Juan Perez – Corpus Christi, Texas

Protesting Politically

XII. 11:00 – 11:50 Estep Auditorium

Ben Myers – Oklahoma Baptist University

Poems in Various Forms

Roxie Faulkner Kirk – Morris, Oklahoma

The Northeast Corner Section

XIII. 11:00 – 11:50 North Lounge

Joey Brown – Missouri Southern State U

Cross-Cut Stanzas

Todd Fuller – University of Oklahoma

Cherry Kool-Aid vs. Post-Truth America

*** Lunch ***

XIV. 2:00 – 3:15 North Lounge

Clarence Wolfshohl – Fulton, Missouri

Scattering Ashes

Terri L. Cummings – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The Nature of Nature

Ron Wallace – Durant, Oklahoma

Songs for Lesser Gods

XV. 2:00 -3:15 Estep Auditorium

Alan Berecka – Del Mar College

The Hamlet of Stittville

Margaret Dornaus – Ozark, Arkansas

Prayer for the Dead: Recently Collected Poems

Terry Lucas – Mill Valley, California

A Small Desert Town

XVI. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Katherine Hoerth – U.T. –Rio Grande Valley

Revisionist Mythmaking in Texas

Chera Hammons – Amarillo, Texas

Born under a Bright Horizon

J.C. “Catfish” Mahan – Edmond, Oklahoma

I Hate Poetry

XVII. 3:30 – 4:45 North Lounge

Dan Wilcox – Albany, New York

Where’s the Nearest Ocean?

Jennifer Luckenbill – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The Water Below

Lyman Grant – Austin Community College

Old Men on Tuesday Mornings

XVIII. 7:00 Estep Auditorium

Featuring Leif Enger

                       

(Musical prelude at 6:30 pm)

Saturday, April 8

XIX. 9:00– 10:15 Estep Auditorium

Ann Howells – Carrollton, Texas

Conjuring the Chesapeake

A.W. Marshall – Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Bend

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish – Oklahoma City U

Elegies & Love Poems

XX. 10:30 -11:45 Estep Auditorium

Andrew Geyer – Univ. of South Carolina-Aiken

Symmetry

Jenny Yang Cropp – Cameron University

Poems from Concordance

Nathan Brown – Wimberly, Texas

Don’t Try

XXI. 12:00 – 1:00 pm Estep Auditorium

Grand Finale: Rilla Askew

University of Oklahoma – Snake Season

           

& Awarding the Dr. Darryl Fisher

State High School Contest Winners

2017: Scissortail Biographies

Dorothy Alexander, author of four poetry collections and one memoir, is a founding member of the Oklahoma Woody Guthrie Poetry Readers. Her work, deeply rooted in Oklahoma, embraces a form she calls “narcissistic narrative.” She also indulges in “selfie” poetry. Her publications include a volume of ekphrastic poetry and art, Lessons From and Oklahoma Girlhood, The Art of Digression, a Memoir in Fragments, Borrowed Dust, The Dust Bowl Revisited, as well as poems and essays in several anthologies. Dorothy received the 2013 Carlile Distinguished Service Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. In an alternate universe she is a lawyer and a municipal judge in rural western Oklahoma. She spends 35%  of her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with her spouse, Devey Napier.

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels and a book of stories. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. Her recent novel, Kind of Kin, is published by Ecco Press, and her collection of essays, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place will be forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in 2017. She is married to actor/writer Paul Austin, and they live in Norman, where Askew teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

Scissortail Creative Writing Contest for Undergraduates

Prizes: 1^st - $100  2^nd - $75  3^rd - $50

(plus a few Honorable Mentions)

Guidelines:

•  Contest is open only to currently enrolled undergraduate students who attend the festival on Friday April 7, 2017 (no graduate level).
• To be eligible, undergraduates MUST be in attendance at the Festival, Friday April 7. Please do not submit if you cannot attend the festival.
• Submissions must be confirmed by a sponsoring faculty member.
• Submissions are limited to one of three categories: 1) one piece of short fiction (up to 7500 words), or one piece of creative nonfiction (up to 7500 words), or up to three poems (150 lines total).
• Prizes will not be designated by genre, but will be awarded for best submissions.
• All entries must be the original work of the student.
• All entries must be neatly typed; please double-space prose 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) Faculty Member’s Name 3) Institution 4) Classification 5) Phone number, Email address.
• Submit work by email to Dr. Ken Hada at scissortailfestival@gmail.com (and please copy submission to khada@ecok.edu). In the subject line of your email submission, type “Undergraduate Contest.”
•  ECU faculty will screen initial entries, then an outside judge will judge all entries that meet minimum guidelines.

DEADLINE: Email entries must be received by midnight February 24, 2017. There will be no exceptions. Awards and recognition will occur Friday April 7 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (April 6-8, 2017). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557.

Judge:  Award-winning poet and professor Ron Wallace will serve as the 2017 judge. Ron is the author of six volumes of poetry published by TJMF Publishing of Clarksville, Indiana and a three time finalist in the Oklahoma Book Awards. He is also a three time winner of The Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Best Book of Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2016. His work has been recently featured in Oklahoma Today, Poetry Bay, Concho River Review, Cybersoleil journal, Cobalt, Red Earth Review, Dragon Poets Review, Songs of Eretz Review, Gris-Gris, Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets and a number of other magazines and anthologies.

Sponsors: The Undergraduate Writing Contest is sponsored by The East Central University Foundation, Inc, in partnership with THE RED EARTH MFA program from Oklahoma City University, directed by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish. Red Earth representatives will be at the 2017 Scissortail Festival. Information about Red Earth MFA is available at http://www.okcu.edu/artsci/departments/english/redearthmfa