We intend to hold an in-person festival. We invite submissions to be considered for the program. Please send your best work, while considering the following guidelines. Please follow exactly.
COVID DISCLAIMER: By submitting your work to be included as a participant and/or audience member of the 2022 Scissortail Festival, you voluntarily acknowledge that you have been vaccinated for COVID and/or you fully accept all responsibility for any potential health risk when gathering in these public events. By submitting work to be included on the festival program, applicants further agree to hold harmless the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival and East Central University. You also recognize that plans to hold an in-person festival, could be changed at the last minute, as necessary, due to unforeseen circumstances associated with Covid, and/or the festival could be canceled at the discretion of East Central University.
* We anticipate that authors will have up to 20 minutes to present their material – this is the total time at the mic, including any comments you make in addition to the presented material.
* 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.
* 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).
* Due to the number of participants, it is not possible to accommodate scheduling requests.
* 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.
* Sessions usually consist of 3 or 4 readers per session. Authors may plan for up to 20 minutes total time at the mic – including prose, including commentary. Please respect your audience and fellow readers by diligently adhering to time restraints.
Submit by email: 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 3rd person).
Deadline for
submission is December 20, 2021. 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 check your calendar before submitting. Participants are not charged registration fees, nor are authors compensated. Please subscribe by providing your email on this website in order to receive notice of information regarding the festival and related events. Updates are posted here.
