Scissortail Creative Writing Contest for Undergraduates

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

(Plus Several Honorable Mentions)

Guidelines:

• Contest is open only to currently enrolled undergraduate students.
• Eligible students are expected to attend the Festival, Friday April 6.  (Please do not submit if you cannot attend the festival).
• Submissions must be confirmed by a sponsoring faculty member.
• Each institution is allowed a maximum of 5 (five entries); This includes ECU.
• 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) Student’s email address AND mailing address 3) Faculty Member’s Name & Email address 3) Institution 4) Classification 5) Phone number 6) Title of original work submitted
• Submit work by email to Dr. Jennifer Dorsey at jdorsey@ecok.edu . In the subject line of your email submission, type “Scissortail Undergraduate Contest.”
• Professor Dorsey will screen initial entries, then an outside judge will judge all entries that meet minimum guidelines. 

DEADLINE: Email entries to jdorsey@ecok.edu  must be received by midnight March 2, 2018. There will be no exceptions. Awards and recognition will occur Friday April 6 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (April 5-7, 2018). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557 for information regarding the Festival.

Judge: We are proud to introduce Gary Worth Moody as the judge for this year’s contest. Gary is a graduate of St. John's College and of the George Mason University MFA Program. Gary has worked as a forest fire fighter, a farrier, a cowboy, and building a town for coal miners in Siberia’s Kuzbass Region. His poems have appeared in myriad journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the anthologies, Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, 1984-2001 (Word Works Press) and Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press). He is the author of Hazards of Grace (Red Mountain Press, 2012), Occoquan (Red Mountain Press, 2015), shortlisted for the international Rubery Book Award in poetry. Gary’s 3rd manuscript, The Burnings, has been accepted for publication by 3: A Taos Press. He is currently developing a 4^th manuscript entitled Lolita, the Bird and the black-Tongued Dog. A falconer, Gary lives in Santa Fe with the artist and writer, Oriana Rodman, two dogs, and Plague, a male red-tail hawk.

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

2018: Schedule of Readings

13^th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

April 5-7, 2018

East Central University

Ada, Oklahoma

Thursday, April 5

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium 

Jason Poudrier - Cameron University

Pvt Pau & We All Had Our Wives

Terri Cummings – Nichols Hills, Oklahoma

Voyeur

Alan Gann – Dallas, Texas

Field Notes: Love, Politics & Movie Musicals

II. 11:00 – 12: 15 Estep Auditorium

Don Stinson – Northern Oklahoma College

from Flatline Horizon

Gay Pasley – Edmond, Oklahoma

Fact Finding

John Yozzo – Tulsa, Oklahoma

for havin' gotten rid of me: love-lyrics Flip-side B: all the goodbyes

*** Lunch ***

III. 2:00 – 3:20 North Lounge

Hank Jones – Tarleton State University

A Rash of Poetry

Dorothy Alexander – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Nevertheless: The Art of Persistence

Christopher Soden – Dallas, Texas

Little Bird

Bill McCloud – Pryor, Oklahoma

Recovering the Rhythm of War

IV. 2:00 – 3:20 Estep Auditorium

Margaret Dornaus – Ozark, Arkansas

For My Ancestors

Aaron Glover – Dallas, Texas

They Say the Plains are Lonely

Laurence Musgrove – Angelo State University

One Kind of Recording

Daniel Miller – Amarillo, Texas

To Shoot a Rattlesnake

V. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Ann Howells – Carrollton, Texas

Softly Beating Wings

Gary Worth Moody – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Lolita, The Bird and the Black-Tongued Dog

Rebecca Hatcher Travis – Sulphur,
Oklahoma from Constant Fires

Roy Beckemeyer – Wichita, Kansas

Amanuensis Angel

VI. 7:00 – 8:15 Estep Auditorium

                   

Carol Coffee Reposa – San Antonio, Texas

In Oklahoma & other poems

Andrew Geyer – Univ. of South Carolina-Aiken

Tangled Up in Blue

Robin Carstensen –Texas A&M - Corpus Christi

Poetry: Histories and Wars

Alan Berecka – Del Mar College

Finally, The Hamlet of Stittville

(Authors’ Reception TBA)

Friday, April 6

VII. 9:00 – 9:50 Estep Auditorium

William Peter Grasso –Tulsa, Oklahoma

from Our Ally, Our Enemy

Maureen DuRant – Cameron University

Skirmishes on the Okie-Irish Border

Brady Peterson – Belton, Texas

García Lorca Is Somewhere in Produce.

VIII. 10:00 – 10:50 Estep Auditorium

Eddie Malone – University of Oklahoma

The Healing Project

Rilla Askew – University of Oklahoma

They Live Meanly Here

IX. 10:00 – 10:50 North Lounge

Larry D. Thomas – Las Cruces, New Mexico

The Innkeeper

Roxie Faulkner Kirk - Morris, Oklahoma

from Save Yourself

  

X. 11:00 – 11:50 North Lounge

Michael Dooley – Tarleton State University

Drowning the Monsters

Joey Brown - Missouri Southern State Univ.

Content Subject to Change

Chris Murphy – Northeastern State University

Roscoe & flash fiction

XI. 11:00 – 11:50 Estep Auditorium

Paul Juhasz – Allentown, Pennsylvania

Proxy

Steven Schroeder - Chicago, Illinois

In the Path of Totality

Richard Dixon – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Leaving Home

*** Lunch ***

XII. 2:00 – 3:20 North Lounge

Sally Rhoades – Albany, New York

Don’t Put Plastic Flowers on My Grave

Thomas Murphy- Texas A&M-Corpus Christi

The Barron Park Diwan

Yvonne Carpenter – Clinton, Oklahoma

Poems from the Prairie

Preston Marshall – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

from Regicide

XIII. 2:00 -3:20 Estep Auditorium

John Morris – Cameron University

Selflessly Through the End of the Steps

Sarah Webb – Burnet, Texas

Red Riding Hood’s Sister

Clarence Wolfshohl – Fulton, Missouri

from Queries and Wonderments

Robert Dean Jr. – Augusta, Kansas

At the Lake with Heisenberg

XIV. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Sly Alley – Tecumseh, Oklahoma

That Good Medicine & other poems

Cindy Huyser – Austin, Texas

Siren Hours

Chris Ellery – Angelo State University

America Is Having an Existential Crisis

Ron Wallace – Southeastern Ok State U.

from Renegade

XV. 7:00 Estep Auditorium

Featuring George Bilgere

                   

Saturday, April 7

XVI. 9:00– 10:15 Estep Auditorium

Nathan Brown – Wimberley, Texas

An Honest Day’s Confession

Michael Howarth – Missouri Southern State U.

A Scoundrel Looks at Forty

Maryann Hurtt – Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin

How My Heart Learned to Bleed Orange

Paul Austin – Norman, Oklahoma

Notes for Hard Times

XVII. 10:30 -11:45 Estep Auditorium

Abigail Keegan – Oklahoma City University

I Could Turn and Live with Animals

Simon Han – Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Impossible Task of Remembering the Nanking Massacre

Julie Chappell – Tarleton State University

Cairns, Cigars, and the Blues

Paul Bowers – Northern Oklahoma College

Quiet and Loud

XVIII. 12:00 – 1:00 pm Estep Auditorium

Grand Finale: Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

* Awarding the Dr. Darryl Fisher State High School Contest Winners

2018 Scissortail Biographies

Dorothy Alexander is a poet, memoirist, storyteller, author of five poetry collections, two multi-genre memoirs, and two volumes of oral history. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Sugar Creek Review; Malpais Review; Sugar Mule Literary Review; Cooweescoowee: a journal of art and literature; Blood & Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine; Dragon Poet Review; Oklahoma Humanities Journal, and others. She has curated poetry readings at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, for 13 years, and monthly readings at various venues in Oklahoma City and Cheyenne, Oklahoma. Dorothy reads and performs her poetry throughout Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. She is a recipient of the Carlile Award for Distinguished Service to the Oklahoma literary community. 

Sly Alley is a writer of poetry and short-fiction whose work has appeared in The Muse, Dragon Poet Review and included in the anthology Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way (Village Books Press, 2017). His work has been featured at the annual Howlers and Yawpers Creativity Symposium at Seminole State College, Poetry at The Paramount in Oklahoma City, Woody Guthrie Poets, Oklahoma Voices First Sunday Poetry at IAO Gallery, Second Sunday Poetry at Tidewater Winery and the September Poetry Series at East Central University. His debut collection of poems titled Strong Medicine (Village Books Press, 2016) won the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for poetry. He writes on a vintage Royal typewriter in a fortified shack in Tecumseh, Oklahoma. 

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the American Book Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and the Willa Award from Women Writing the West. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2001. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. In 2009 Askew received the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

2018: Scissortail Press Release

 Accomplished poets Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and George Bilgere headline a lengthy list of outstanding writers as East Central University conducts the Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, April 5-7, on the ECU campus.

Mish and Bilgere are two of 58 writers who will be making presentations at the three-day event.

For more information on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival or questions about group attendance, contact Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557 or at KHada@ecok.edu.

JEANETTA CALHOUN MISH

Mish, 2017-18 Oklahoma State Poet Laureate, has authored several books, most recently What I Learned at the War, a poetry collection (West End Press, 2016) and Oklahomeland: Essays (Lamar University Press, 2015). Her 2009 poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press) won an Oklahoma Book Award, a Wrangler Award and the WILLA Award from Women Writing in the West.

She has published poetry in This Land, Naugatuck River Review, Concho River Review, LABOR: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, World Literature Today, San Pedro River Review, About Place Journal, The Fiddleback and Yellow Medicine Journal, among others.

Essays and short fiction have appeared in Oklahoma Today, Sugar Mule, Crosstimbers, Red Dirt Chronicles, Cybersoleil and The Emily Dickinson Society International Bulletin’s essay series, “Poet to Poet.”

Mish’s anthology publications include poems in Returning the Gift and the Colour of Resistance as well as the introductory essay for Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: New Oklahoma Writing.

She is editor of Mongrel Empire Press which was recognized as 2012 Publisher of the Year by the Woodcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.

Mish also serves as contributing editor for World Literature Today, Oklahoma Today and Sugar Mule: A Literary Journal. She is also editor of Mongrel Empire Press while also serving on the board of OKC LitFest and Returning the Gift Indigenous Writers Festival.

She is director of the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA at Oklahoma City University where she also serves as advisor to Red Earth Review and as faculty mentor in writing, pedagogy, professional writing and the craft of poetry.

GEORGE BILGERE

            Bilgere, a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, has published seven collections of poetry, including most recently, Blood Pages (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Others include: Imperial (2014); The White Museum (2010), which was awarded the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Haywire (2006), which earned a May Swenson Poetry Award and the Good Kiss (2002), which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award.

            He has won numerous awards, including the Midland Authors Award and a Pushcart Prize. Bilgere has received grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Fullbright Commission and Ohio Arts Council.

            Bilgere’s poetry, residing firmly in the everyday world of janitors, college students or siblings, is noted for its controlled poignancy and limpid free-verse line. Collins described him as “a welcome breath of fresh American air.” His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Fulcrum and the Best American Poetry series.

            He teaches creative writing at John Carroll University. Bilgere grew up in Riverside, California and earned his B.A. at the University of California-Riverside. He received his M.A. in English literature from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and earned a Ph.D. in contemporary British and American poetry from the University of Denver in 1988.

            He has received grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Ohio Arts Council. In 1991, Bilgere was a Fullbright Scholar in Bilbao, Spain. In 2002, he was named a Witter Bynner Fellow through the Library of Congress by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

            Collins called Bilgere’s work “a welcome breath of fresh, American air in the house of contemporary poetry.”