From the Director - Welcome 2024

Welcome to the 19th Annual Scissortail Festival. I am still amazed that decent people from all over the country travel to Ada, Oklahoma to read and listen to others read. But perhaps I shouldn’t be amazed. Perhaps reading to each other, and being read to, is a deep need that too often goes unfulfilled. Maybe Scissortail allows for that need to be met. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about history, about my time with this festival, about your experience with this festival. Thank you for contributing to the festival – 19 of you for the first time – and to all the returners, both presenters and especially audience members. Thank you for making good history with me, with us all.

The History We Are

Hear the crow call.
See the crow flap
against morning light,
wrens secluded
in wintered branches,
a jogger in purple
moves around the lake
in careful trot,
two mallards in shallows.

The sycamores are white.
The cedars are green.
There is no breeze.
Brown oak leaves cling
to what once was.
Everything hangs on
to what has been
while the crow records
the history we are.


On behalf of the many wonderful colleagues and volunteers who contribute so much to these three days, Welcome! Enjoy your time here together at ECU.

Ken Hada

19th Annual Scissortail: The Poster

 

2024: Schedule of Readings

19^th Annual: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival
April 4 - 6, 2024
East Central University
Ada, Oklahoma 

Thursday, April 4

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium 

Ky George: Gallup, New Mexico
Fire in the Pulpit
Walter Bargen: Ashland, Missouri
Down the Rabbit Hole of War
Mark Walling: East Central University
One Dalmatian 

II. 11:00 – 12: 10 Estep Auditorium

Nikki Herrin: Wayne, Oklahoma
Progression
Wendy Dunmeyer: Lawton, Oklahoma
Importance of Words
Alan Berecka: Sinton, Texas
Selected Poems 

III. 11:00 - 12:10 Regents Room

Clarence Wolfshohl: Fulton, Missouri
Lo, the Gods
Sally Rhoades: Albany, New York
When the Roses are in Bloom
Josh Grasso: East Central University
The Domovoi

IV. 11:00 – 12:10 Boswell Chapel

Lyman Grant: Harrisonburg, Virginia
November Constellation
Keely Record: Tulsa, Oklahoma
From Here
Brady Peterson: Belton, Texas
Letters from the Edge of the Round Earth 

*** Lunch ***

19th Annual Scissortail: Featured Authors

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE Grant Fellow with the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.

Coggin was awarded the Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, aand Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have been publishedin POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, SWWIM, Lavender Review, About Place Journal, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley where they tend to wild ones and each other.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children's literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR's "Focus: Black Oklahoma" monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film "Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later." Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Julliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include, Opa's Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams; new and collected poems, 1994-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Forthcoming titles include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse, with Joel Daniel Phillips, a children's biography of Ralph Ellison, and a series of books on The Black Rodeo. Lansana's work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art and Oklahoma Humanities, is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.

 

Steve Yarbrough is the author of twelve books, most recently the novel Stay Gone Days. His other books are the nonfiction title Bookmarked: Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, the novels The Unmade World, The Realm of Last Chances, Safe from the Neighbors, The End of California, Prisoners of War, Visible Spirits and The Oxygen Man, and the short story collections Veneer, Mississippi History and Family Men. His work has been published in several foreign languages, including Dutch, Italian, Japanese and Polish, and it has also appeared in Ireland, Canada, and the U.K. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the California Book Award, the Richard Wright Award and the Robert Penn Warren Award. He has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The Unmade World won the 2019 Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.

The son of Mississippi Delta cotton farmers, Steve is currently a professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. He has two daughters – Lena Yarbrough and Antonina Parris – and is married to the Polish writer Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough.  They divide their time between Boston and Krakow.

Steve is an aficionado of jazz and bluegrass music, which he plays on guitar, mandolin and banjo, often after midnight.

2024: Scissortail Biographies

Aly Allen is a trans, neurodivergent poet, parent, and veteran. She is the author of Paying for Gas with Quarters (Middle West Press, 2023) and the chapbook Approaching Valhalla (Bottlecap Press, 2022). She has been an editor, reviewer, and reader for publications including: The Cimarron Review, Consequence, Glass Mountain, & Inkling. She founded the Military Memoirs Workshop (for veterans, servicemembers, and their families) and Edited the Military Memoirs Journal, featuring the work of a Vietnam veteran and their daughter. Her recent publications appear in: One Art Poetry, Panoply, new words (press), Press Pause, Consequence, New Note Poetry, and @ThreadsLitMag. She won the 2019 Lillie Robertson Prize for Poetry. She holds an MFA creative writing from Oklahoma State University, where she now teaches. Follow her on Threads and Instagram @notasquirrel

Dr. Rubeena Anjum is an educator and a psychologist. Now retired, she is one of the members of the Richardson Poets Group and Dallas Poets Community. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Artistic Antidote UMN Clinical Affairs, Corona Virus Anthology by Austin International Poetry Festival-2020, Art on the Trails: Mending 2021 Chapbook, Word City Literary Journal, Southwestern American Literature, and The Writer’s Garret-Common Language Project: Networks Anthology 2023, among others. Her full-length collection of poems by Finishing Line Press-2023 is titled My Photo Album.

Rilla Askew is the author of five novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction. She’s received the American Book Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared in Nimrod, Tin House, World Literature Today, AGNI, and elsewhere. Askew’s novel Prize for the Fire, about Early Modern English writer Anne Askew, was a finalist for the 2023 Oklahoma Book Award. A new collection of stories, The Hungry & The Haunted, will be published by Belle Point Press in Fall 2024.

Winners of the 20th Annual Daryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

Poetry Winners:

First Place: Ava Blakley, “Ocean Lovers. ” Edmond Santa Fe (Instructor: Valerie Roberson)
Second Place: Elaine Gao, “Superfluous Verbiage.” Jenks (Emily Stewart)
Third Place: Gabriella French, “Cracked Pavement.” Life Ready Center (Maureen DuRant)

Honorable Mentions:
Sarah Peters, “Pills.” Shawnee (Scott Bartley)
Nora Garrison, “The Echo of an Answer.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Kailee Long, “Either a Lover or a Hater.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Chloie Harris, “Motherly Love.” Howe (Rachel Kardokus)
Ava Reno, “Today I Cried.” Kingston (Mrs. Bain)
Landen J, Wright, “Monologue of a Devoted Lover.” Coalgate  (Mary Klinger)
Anna Arnold “Into the Unknown.” Salina  (Mr. Thompson)
Brinley Hines, “Drowning.” Elmore City Pernell (Tina Casey)
Jenna Koehn, “Endings.” Bixby (Heather Thatcher)
Gabryella Whitlow, “Stars.” Schulter  (Vanessa Vancleve)

Fiction Winners:

First Prize: Garrett Riley. “Ant God.” Washington (Instructor: Dawn Lanham)
Second Prize: Faith Lawson. “Doctor.” Ada (Talina Eaker)
Third Prize: Jocelyn James. “Tvska Alla Tek.” Latta  (Hayley Bryant)

Honorable Mentions:
Elaine Gao. “The Girl at Chateau-LaGrange.” Jenks High School (Emily Stewart)
Rachel Prince. “Eschaton.” Coalgate (Mary Klingler)
Sarah Peters. “Not in This Life.” Shawnee (Scott Bartley)
Diesel Johnson. “Neon Angels.” Lawton (Maureen Durant)
Addison Vance. “Tricks of the Light.” Salina (Coty Thompson)
Bella Hendrix. “Glitter Can’t Fix Everything.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Makayla Bostwick. “A Warm Return Home.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Nora Garrison. “Takes One to Know One.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Brady Hackett. “Past the Creek.” Edmond Memorial (Kelly Bristow)
Ava Blakley. “Arson is a Crime, Only if You’re Caught.” Edmond Santa Fe (Valerie Roberson)