Scissortail Submission Guidelines

13^th Annual Scissortail Festival, April 5-7, 2018

Between 40 and 60 authors will be selected for the program. Selections (and rejections) are determined by members of the ECU English faculty. Selections to the program are accepted on the basis of:

            Quality, Published Work (peer-reviewed journals, for example)

            Freshness of Material (reading some new stuff)

            Appropriateness for Time Restraints and Subject Matter

            Meeting the Submission Deadline

Unaccepted submissions do not necessarily reflect quality of writing - space, time and personnel limit our ability to accept as many as we would like. All applicants (those accepted and those not accepted for the program) are cordially invited to attend the festival to enjoy the benefits of interacting with fellow authors (the festival hotel rate is available for all guests of the festival).

Please review the following guidelines before submitting. To fit the schedule, authors will have 15 minutes to present their material.  Fiction and creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to excerpt their submission to fit into the time restraints (The appeal of a narrative may, in fact, be heightened by presenting a carefully selected excerpt, rather than speed-reading).

Guidelines: Please read closely and follow exactly. Please look at your calendar before submitting! Due to the increasing number of festival participants, 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 15 minutes total time at the mic (including prose) depending on how the session is scheduled. Please respect your audience and fellow readers by diligently adhering to time restraints.

Email submissions are preferred. Submit: 1) complete contact information 2) the title of your program and the 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 3^rd person).

Deadline for submission is December 29, 2017. The schedule will be announced as early as possible, in January) and certainly by early February at the latest.

Send email submissions to: scissortailfestival@gmail.com. Identify “Scissortail Submission” in the subject line. (Please copy your submission to khada@ecok.edu.)

Please check your calendar before submitting. Participants are not charged registration fees, nor are authors compensated. Please subscribe by providing your 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.

The 14th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

East Central University presents
Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition

Prizes awarded at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 5-7, 2018

     Fiction:      1st Place   $200                          Poetry:       1st Place   $200

                        2nd Place  $150                                             2nd Place  $150

                        3rd Place   $100                                            3rd Place  $ 100

                                       16 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) Teacher’s name

   3) School 4) Classification (senior, junior, etc.) 5) Phone number, Email and mailing address.

* Work may be submitted through conventional mail or email.

DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before Friday, February 2, 2018. Email entries must be sent by 11:59 p.m. on February 2, 2018. There will be no exceptions.

Winners will be notified in early March, and awards will be presented Saturday, April 7 in the Cole University Center (Estep Auditorium), on the East Central University campus.  A list of winners and winning entries may be posted on this website.  Please visit this site for festival and contest history and information.       

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)