Sunday, September 15, 2013

The 2014 Press Release

9TH ANNUAL SCISSORTAIL CREATIVE WRITING FESTIVAL COMES TO ECU

The ninth annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, featuring Nathan Brown, Carolyne Wright, James Hoggard and Jonas Zdanys, in addition to more than 50 author presentations from Oklahoma and beyond, is April 3-5, 2014, on the campus of East Central University in Ada, Okla. All sessions are free and open to the public.

Nathan Brown is a songwriter, photographer and award-winning poet from Norman, Okla. He is also serving as the current Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma for 2013 to 2014.

He holds a PhD in Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Oklahoma and teaches there as well. Brown spends time traveling and performing readings and concerts, as well as speaking and leading workshops in high schools, universities and community organizations on creativity, creative writing and the need for readers to not give up on poetry.

The author of eight books, Brown’s work includes Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems (2012), Letters to the One-Armed Poet: A Memoir of Friendship, Loss, and Butternut Squash Ravioli (2011), My Sideways Heart (2010), Two Tables Over (2008) - Winner of the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award, Not Exactly Job (2007) - a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, Ashes Over the Southwest (2005), Suffer the Little Voices (2005) - a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, Hobson’s Choice (2002).

Brown has received two Pushcart Prize nominations, and his CD of all-original songs, Gypsy Moon was released in 2010. His work has appeared in numerous publications including World Literature Today, Concho River Review, Wichita Falls Literature and Art Review, “Walt’s Corner” of The Long-Islander newspaper (a column started by Whitman in 1838), Oklahoma Today Magazine and Oklahoma Humanities Magazine to name a few.

Carolyne Wright has published nine books and chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent book is Mania Klepto: the Book of Eulene (2011). Her previous collection, A Change of Maps (2006), was nominated for the LA Times Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Idaho Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Wright’s other recent collection, Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (2005), won the Blue Lynx Prize, Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry and American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Other books include Premonitions of an Uneasy Guest; Stealing the Children; an invitational chapbook, Carolyne Wright: Greatest Hits 1975-2001; a collection of essays, A Choice of Fidelities: Lectures and Readings from a Writer’s Life; and a recent anthology, Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women.

A graduate of Seattle University’s Humanities Honors Program with a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Syracuse University, Wright has received awards from the Poetry Society of America, Seattle Arts Commission and the New York State Council on the Arts. She has been a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo.

Wright spent time in Chile on a Fulbright Study Grant during the presidency of Salvador Allende and is working on an ongoing investigative memoir of her experiences. She also spent four years on Indo-U.S. Subcommission and Fulbright Senior Research fellowships in Calcutta and Dhaka, Bangladesh, collecting and translating the work of Bengali women poets and writers for an anthology in progress, A Bouquet of Roses on the Burning Ground.

Author of more than twenty books, James Hoggard has published novels, poetry, stories, personal essays and had seven plays produced, including two in New York. His work has been published in Harvard Review, Southwest Review, Partisan Review, Redbook, Arts & Letters, Translation Review, and numerous other places, including England, Cuba, Czech Republic,  Canada, and India. His most recent book is The Devil’s Fingers & Other Personal Essays (2013), preceded by the novel The Mayor’s Daughter (2011),  Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems (2009), and Ashes In Love (2009), translations of two books by the important Chilean poet Oscar Hahn.
His numerous awards include the PEN Southwest Poetry Prize for 2007, an NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing, and other awards for his fiction, poetry, literary translations, and journalism. He has served two terms as president of the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently named a Fellow in the organization and voted into membership of the Philosophical Society of Texas. Former Director of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature program, Leonard Randolph wrote that Hoggard’s novel Trotter Ross “isfar and away the best coming of age novel in current American literature.” Reviewing Hoggard’s collection of stories and a novella, the noted novelist John Nichols wrote that “Hoggard knows as much as anyone on earth about the small tender mercies and brutalities of people … and herein also lies the best dialogue I have read in a long, long time.”
He has taught at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls for many years and is the Perkins-Prothro Distinguished Professor of English.

Jonas Zdanys is a bilingual poet and translator and the author of 41 books, 38 of them being collections of poetry written in English and Lithuanian, most recently Cormorants and The Kingfisher’s Reign.

He has received a number of prizes and book awards for his poetry and for his translations of Lithuanian poetry into English. Zdanys was also the subject of an exhibit at the National Library of Lithuania.

Zdanys serves as a professor of English at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., where he teaches creative writing and poetry. He served as Chief Academic Officer and Associate Commissioner of Higher Education for the State of Connecticut from 1998 to 2009.

Prior to this, Zdanys worked at Yale University for 18 years, where he held a faculty appointment in the Department of Comparative Literature, was a Scholar-in-Residence in the Council on Russian and East European Studies and served in a variety of administrative positions.

Zdanys has been a reader and panelist for the Creative Writing Fellowship Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, a consultant for Wesleyan University Press and Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and editor of various other literary and scholarly journals.

In honors graduate of Yale University, Zdanys also earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the State University of New York.

Friday, September 13, 2013

2014 Submission Guidelines

9th Annual Scissortail Festival, April 3-5, 2014

A showcase of Oklahoma creative writing, the Scissortail Festival welcomes submissions from creative writers in Oklahoma and across the country. In addition to feature authors (highlighted on the flyer and press release) the festival celebrates published, established and emerging authors reading original poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

Guidelines: Please read closely and follow exactly. Please look at your calendar before submitting! Due to the increasing popularity of the festival, 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 Dallas 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 to the festival.

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 either 15 or 20 minutes total time at the mic (including prose) depending on how the session is scheduled. In other words, some readers will get 15 minutes, and some will get 20 minutes. Please respect your audience and fellow readers and follow your allotted time diligently.

Email submissions are encouraged. Submit: 1) complete contact information 2) the title of your program and sample/s of 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 January 7, 2014. The schedule will be announced by February.

Send email submissions to: khada@ecok.edu. Identify “Scissortail Submission” in the subject line. (It is also a good idea to copy your submission to khadakhada@gmail.com. If you prefer, you may send submissions to: Dr. Ken Hada, Department of English & Languages, East Central University, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820.

Please check your calendar before submitting. Participants are not charged registration fees. Please subscribe by 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. 

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Hotel Arrangements: 2019

La Quinta is the official festival hotel for the 2019 festival.

Call and mention SEASON #1344 (Scissortail Festival) in order to get the festival rate for the 2019 Scissortail Festival. $83 king $88 two queens + tax is available to authors and guests attending the festival (suites are higher price).

From the Management: “Thank you for staying with us every year. We do love serving your group. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you.”

Ronnie Gandhi, GM
La Quinta Inn & Suites
2828 E. Arlington St.
Ada, OK 74820
(580) 436-5000 Hotel
(580) 436-5004 Fax

Lq6494gm@laquinta.com