Monday, October 20, 2014

The 2015 Press Release

The tenth annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, featuring Darrell Bourque, Heid E. Erdrich, Steven Schroeder, and Mary Kay Zuravleff, in addition to more than 50 author presentations from Oklahoma and beyond, is April 2 - 4, 2015, on the campus of East Central University in Ada, Okla. All sessions are free and open to the public.

Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie by Louisiana’s Poet Laureate (2007-2011) Darrell Bourque is a reflection of contemporary life in Acadiana in Louisiana and is a story of the legends of the journey of the Acadians from the Canadian Maritimes and the various ways they made their way to Louisiana. The poems offer personal revelations in the wake of illness and death of loved ones. They open the minds and spirits of great artists from Van Gogh to Elemore Morgan Jr., and most importantly, these poems give real voice to historical figures. 

Bourque grew up in Church Point, Louisiana. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Bourque completed his doctoral degree from Florida State University. He is professor emeritus in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he served as the first Friends of the Humanities Honor Professor.
 
Heid E. Erdrich is an author of four poetry collections, with the most recent being Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems. She is the recipient of awards from The Loft Literary Center, the Archibald Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board and First People’s Fund, to name a few. She is a 2013 Artist of the Year honoree from City Pages Minneapolis. 

Erdrich completed her education from St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, Dartmouth College and John Hopkins Writing Seminars. She also designed her own doctoral program. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota and is a member of the Ojibwe Tribe. She routinely works with galleries to present exhibits focused on Native American artists and is the director of the Wiigwaas Press, an Ojibwe language publisher. Erdrich currently lives in Minnesota.

Steven Schroeder is a poet and visual artist who has published 12 books of poems, short stories and art. He grew up in the Texas Panhandle, has taught at the University of Chicago Graham School and received his Ph.D. in Ethics and Society from the University of Chicago. He has also taught in China, and much of his poetry is influenced by his time there.

Schroeder states that emptiness plays an important role in his poetry and painting, by focusing on what is not there as much as what is. He hopes readers and viewers are able to see more in his work than what it contains. Schroeder’s most recent work, mind the gaps: fragments, is exemplary of his philosophy.

Mary Kay Zuravleff is a novelist and short story writer who grew up in Oklahoma City. She has published three novels including her latest work, Man Alive!, which was named a 2013 Washington Post Notable Book. Her two earlier novels, The Bowl is Already Broken and The Frequency of Souls, won the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and the James Jones First Novel Award. Her first novel was also a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. She is a five-time winner of a D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowship. 

Zuravleff earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She has taught writing at American University, Johns Hopkins University and George Mason University. Zuravleff lives in Washington, D.C. and is the cofounder of D.C. Women Writers. 

The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival runs from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 2pm. on Saturday. Each day is broken into several sessions. A complete schedule of readers will be posted on this website.

The Darryl Fisher High School Creative Writing Contest winners will also be awarded during the festival. The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival is sponsored in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council. For more information, contact Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557.

2015 Submission Guidelines

10th Annual Scissortail Festival, April 2-4, 2015

Due to the increased popularity of the festival, the competition for a place on the program is keen. Obviously there is a limited amount of time and space available, and unfortunately, not all submissions can be accepted. Selections to the program are accepted or rejected by a committee of ECU personnel on the basis of:

Quality, Published Work (peer-reviewed journals, for example)
Freshness of Material (reading some new stuff)
Appropriateness in Subject Matter and Time Restraints (fitting into the Festival)
Meeting the Deadline
Perceived Ability to happily join in a celebratory, festival atmosphere.

If your submission is not accepted for the main program this year, we sincerely hope you will not be discouraged. We hope you will continue your writing efforts with even greater vigor, and we invite you to attend the festival to gain the benefit of reading, listening and interacting with the audience of writers, participate in events that may occur during the festival.

Even if you have been on the program in the past, please review the following guidelines before submitting (if the number of submissions warrant, we will move to 15 minutes per presenter instead of 20 minutes, as has been our tradition; and fiction writers are encouraged to excerpt their submission to fit into the time restraints (The appeal of a story may in fact be heightened by presenting a carefully selected excerpt).

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 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 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 5, 2015. 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 (since email sometimes goes into the spam folder). 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.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Now Available for Purchase: 2014 Scissortail Commemorative CD

Click here to purchase a 2-disc set of poems and excerpts of prose and fiction recorded live, April 3-5, 2014 at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival on the East Central University campus.

Track listing:
DISC 1
Track 1 Introduction
Track 2 Larry D. Thomas, The Lobster & The Lobsterman’s Dream
Track 3 Ron Wallace, of Horses and Hawks & Desperado
Track 4 Maureen DuRant, Collect Call Home
Track 5 Johnnie Catfish Mahan, The Truth about the Truth
Track 6 Elizabeth Raby, Vassar Virgins (excerpt)
Track 7 Alan Berecka, Leveling & A Texan’s Fugitive Thoughts
Track 8 John Morris, How to Live in the Moment
Track 9 Jessica Isaacs, What a Widow Carries with Her
Track 10 Rob Roensch, The Dogs of Baltimore (excerpt)
Track 11 Charlotte Renk, Knock and the Door Shall
Track 12 Hank Jones, Cigars on Bourbon Street
Track 13 William Peter Grasso, Long Walk to the Sun (excerpt)
Track 14 Margaret Dornaus, Stardust
Track 15 Jennifer Kidney, Signs of Spring
Track 16 Brady Peterson, Olympia
Track 17 Brent Newsom, Mathematics
Track 18 Sarah Webb, Story
Track 19 Arn Henderson, Cimarron Baseline
Track 20 James Hoggard, Blue Paints (excerpt)
Track 21 Clarence Wolfshohl, Creation
Track 22 Constance Squires, Dopamine Agonistes (excerpt)
Track 23 George McCormick Inland Empire (excerpt)
Track 24 Carol Coffee Reposa, A Love Poem for Oklahoma
Track 25 Andrew Geyer, Love Songs (excerpt)

DISC 2
Track 1 Dorothy Alexander, Autobiography
Track 2 Carolyn Wright, Red Earth Central
Track 3 Timothy Bradford, Carnet de Voyage (excerpt)
Track 4 Jim Wilson, Beirut Spring (excerpt)
Track 5 Steven Schroeder, In a Dream
Track 6 Sally Rhoades, My Father’s Slippers
Track 7 Carl Sennhenn, Bears Won’t Waltz & Sotto Voce
Track 8 Jim Spurr, Little Jimmy from California
Track 9 Julie Chappell, Alcatraz
Track 10 Jason Poudrier, Sand Stone
Track 11 Hugh Tribbey, To Woody Guthrie in Heaven
Track 12 Jonas Zdanys, Excerpt with Lithuanian Translation & My Father’s Wine
& Tomorrow & The Revenant
Track 13 John Yozzo, Ponca & Valentine
Track 14 Bayard Godsave, The Trilling Wire (excerpt)
Track 15 Abigail Keegan, Rubbermaid & Roadwork
Track 16 Ben Myers, What to Do after a Tornado & The Second Worst Job I Ever Had
Track 17 Hardy Jones, A New Bike for Little Mike (excerpt)
Track 18 LeAnne Howe, I Fuck Up in Japan (excerpt)
Track 19 Nathan Brown, Condolence & Teenager & Diamond Apology &Neruda’s Garden

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Scissortail 2014: It's On!


As of 9:30 this morning, the Ninth Annual the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival is under way. If you are attending the Festival and have heard something you like, please leave a comment here so that the authors and everyone else can know what you think. Just click on the comment button below to leave a comment and read the comments left by others. And if you're not attending the Festival, come on over!

Monday, March 31, 2014

Welcome: From the Director – 2014

Ben Myers and Ken Hada (April 3, 2014)
On behalf of so many gracious volunteers, students and staff at ECU, I gladly welcome you to the 9th Annual Scissortail Festival. This year, eleven authors new to the festival join those who have returned. To all of you, and to the many audience members who celebrate creativity with us, I hope the festival is an inspiring experience. We have limitations of facilities and resources, but what we do have, we celebrate – and that is the love of the story, the need to tell and even more, the need to listen. We do it for applause, and we do it to applaud each other. During our longer and colder than usual winter just passed, I enjoyed rereading many of the authors who are on the program this year. I think this is an important exercise – to re-read the books on our shelves, to rendezvous with those who are writing those books, and to affirm the capacity to know and participate in creation.

The last line in B.H. Fairchild’s poem To My Friend captivates me: “the small darknesses we never see.” Something about this phrase sings poetry. It haunts those realities we feel, the fears and failures we sense, the joy we want to believe in. It points to the incalculable value of the creative arts. For us, authors and audience, these three days together may offer us the chance to see something that often eludes us. Together, we can at least look for it – whatever the “it” is for you at this time. Part of “it” for me is the recent loss of my favorite Uncle Max, who was one of the last links to my Hungarian ancestry, raised by my Great Grandparents Gustava and Julia, the family historian, the storyteller who knew well and paid attention to those from the “Old Country.” The last stanza of a tribute poem I wrote about Uncle Max may speak to what Fairchild imagines, and hopefully it includes you and your participation in this wonderful but all-too-short experience we live together:

See the surf – the waves beat
Against the shore but look out, look away
From this harsh moment and see
How the bay settles
Into endless beauty the way prairie grass
Flows forever in the wind
That calls us home
                       
So I invite you to take part in as much as you can, make a friend, offer a ride, listen with good ears, laugh and love, even as we think about loss. To those who feel my use of nature is too sentimental, I leave you with one of my recent rough drafts, after thinking about Fairchild’s line and other matters, peace J


Three Days in April

Like a junkie
I keep coming back
Scissortail – I bet I’ve said or typed that word
A couple thousand times just this year alone –
It is the bird that makes me scratch
I cannot help myself
On my knees before you muttering
Hair messed up, unshaven, sleepless
All this for a fix
All my days, all my nights
Amount to nothing more than running scared
Afraid the last ecstasy will be the last
Worried sick that when I come down
Next time won’t bring me back up

Until it returns – gets me off, I float
In the freedom of language, the overdose
Of image and sound – Word.

For three days in April my itch is salved
Tripping far away and I am high
Where no bird could fly


Ken Hada

April 2014

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Scissortail 2014: The Poster


Winners of the 10th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

Poetry Winners
First Place: Shannon Abbott, "Aurora", Norman North
Second Place: Neena Alavicheh, "Reflections in Leaves" , Yukon High School
Third Place: James Bratton, "The Port", Norman North

Honorable Mentions:
Larissa Lynch, "Mac's," Walters High School
Erin Haastrup, "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister," Union High School (Tulsa)
Makayla Leann Bray, "Seven Plays of a Pawn," Ada High School
Alexis Skrunack, "This is Where I Am," Walters High School
Victoria Quiroga, "The Old Mill," Lawton High School
Dominique Bradley, "Ode to My Father," Lawton High School
Samantha Huckabay, "Dad Never Cooked Much," Norman North
Aubrey Crynes, "By Sophomore Year," Norman North
Sara Ishaq, "Alien," Norman North
Tanner Capehart, "After the Rain Dance," Sallisaw High School

Fiction Winners
First Place: Peter Biles. “The Patriot.” Latta High School. (Teacher: Holly Wood)
Second Place: Katelyn Elrod. “Remembering Audrey.” Chickasha High School. (Teacher: Jo Perryman)
Third Place: Sara Ishaq. “A Portrait of Genevieve Poole.” Norman North High School. (Teacher: Kathy Woods)

Honorable Mention
Whitney Stewart. “Therapy.” Moore High School. (Teacher: Eileen Worthington)
Misty Jeter. “The Singing Bird Flies Low: The Diary Of Harlequin Linchtstrahl.” Dickson High School. (Teacher: Jennifer Moore)
Jenny Corbin. “Screaming.” Bridge Creek High School. (Teacher: Leslie Munhollon)
Justin Wu. “Out of Time.” Norman North High School. (Teacher: Kathy Woods)
Andrew Mather. “Spatty.” Bartlesville High School. (Teacher: Darla Tresner)
Spencer Yue. “Tintoror.” Norman North High School. (Teacher: Kathy Woods)
Aryn Alderman. “Dream World.” Norman High School. (Teacher: Kaysi Sullivent)
Subhieh Matar. “Dark Detective.” Deer Creek High School. (Teacher: Jason Stephenson)
Jamie Lim. “When Lightning Strikes.” Norman North High School. (Teacher: Kathy Woods)
Ella Parsons. “Phantomes du Louvre.” Norman North High School. (Teacher: Kathy Woods)

"Aurora" by Shannon Abbott


Sweep me off my feet and carry me
Away through dense oak forests and mountain ranges high
Stretching up and up until they’ve mastered the clouds.

Take my hand and lead me
Away over the lakes so deep,
And fields of luscious green,
Sunlit and smiling.


Then pick me back up and show me the way
Under the watchful eyes of the midnight stars with
Stardust in my pocket to guide us in the
Blackest caves,
Silver shimmering on my fingers.


Do not stop until we arrive
The snow crisp and cool and beautiful beneath our feet
The tundra on its wedding day
And the bouquet tossed so high that the moon catches it
And laughs a twinkling laugh
Sending dancing petals across the sky

Remnants of roses red and lilacs purple.

"Reflections in Leaves" by Neena Alavicheh


Autumn is lonely.
Dead leaves take to running with the wind,
Their tiny legs skittering against the brown grass
In a dance of nostalgia and breathless laughter.

Wind fills my lungs,
And its scent is sweet and cold
As it infects my soul with a deep longing.
My hair flows with it, wildly yet gently stroking my face.
And I hear the footsteps of days long gone,
And of people whose voices are background noise to my journey.

Will I remember them?
Perhaps not, but like the warmth of my coffee, they linger
For now.
Clouds, in the brilliant blue sky, we float away from the older days.
But the sun warms my heart and calms my wanderlust.
Perhaps for forever I will live in this moment
Of warmth and contentment

Of dead leaves and the sweet, lonely smell of fall.

"The Port" by James Bratton


tall-mastered trawlers swarm with
leathery scaly wags gathered to hunt
the great blue-backed lobster
they leave the rocky coast behind
and travel to the salty waves

their backs are burdened with wool sweaters
and their own yellow shells
their senses with nauseous scents
that no longer register with the hardened hands
their faces with scars of storms past
and prickly grey beards
their minds with lives lost
and forgotten friends

they turn their backs to the shore

their faces to the winds

"The Patriot" by Peter Biles

A house propped its legs on a beach and was glad to be painted cool blue, because the house liked blue, and liked the ocean. Its shingles were drooping but at the same time firm, and the paint on the porch was peeling but somehow fresh and admirable.
It was an old house good enough to suit an old man, and lenient enough to be burdened by a girl of twelve. The village was snugly behind them, set in a pleasing arrangement of colors and sizes, but the crags and cliffs above them were even more pleasing, though they were arranged by nature and scoffed the ocean with black, stony hands.
Supposing that having few possessions means happiness, the old man and his granddaughter were two of the most well to do people around. The old man had a fiddle that he played to the girl on frightening nights, and the girl had a small guitar, its six strings still miraculously intact and its battered neck sleek from use. They played the instruments and had nothing else to smile on. The table in the kitchen was a scarred plank. The bowls were old and cracked, and the electricity flickered. The music from the fiddle and guitar, however, overruled the ruts in the wood, even the sad blinking the overhead light gave in the kitchen. The twangs and high cries only reminded the old man that he belonged to the girl, and that the girl belonged to him.
The night skies were more often lit with flash bombs in the distance than ocean storms. War cut through the southern villages but hadn’t the time to visit the small, rather unnoticeable beach town. Even when rumors of air raids forced the people on their toes, no planes except the mail deliveries ever circled overhead.
“Why is there war, Papa?” It was a night when the bombs sporadically made the beach town tremble. Beads of white like lightning sliced their way inside through the window in the kitchen. The old man was drinking a lukewarm cup of coffee and polishing the fiddle with his handkerchief. At the other end of the table, the girl was expectantly staring at him, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know, Micah,” he said without looking up. “People make friends, but their friends always have enemies.” Another soft boom and a dim flash of light.
“It scares me,” said Micah.
“Me too.” Micah continued to stare, but acquired surprise. The old man had not changed the intent bleeding of his eyes on the dark wood. The admittance that he was afraid hadn’t hindered the motion of his hands.
“You’re afraid?” Micah said softly. “That can’t be.” He looked up and caught Micah’s rich, brown eyes, which he labeled as deep as any forgotten myth. He fingered his mustache and studied the child for a couple of silent moments.
“Do you think fear is a childhood pastime?” he asked her.
“I always thought it goes away when you get old,” replied Micah.
“I hope you are not disappointed, my dear. Fear is a parasite. It doesn’t go away unless you fight it away.”
Not a second subsequent to his words the wailing of a siren slit the night’s throat. Micah’s heart jumped and her pale cheeks became flushed. The old man put down the handkerchief, his eyes fixed through the window.
“Heaven forbid,” he whispered.
 The tremors from the bombs had turned into vehement quakes. The beach town was no longer unacquainted with the war.

"Remembering Audrey" by Katelyn Elrod

"A Portrait of Genevieve Poole" by Sara Ishaq

Chapter the First: Albert Farrell
Headache
            As in, the morning started off with one. Normally, I just shrugged it off, ‘cuz I got headaches all the time, so what’s one more, right? Wrong. This, this was the mother of all headaches, and Lord almighty, I really thought it would be the end of me. But I couldn’t let it take me down, not today. So I got dressed as quick as I could, a flurry of arms and legs as I tried to fight down the waves of nausea lapping at my consciousness.
When I finally finished, I reached over to my desk to grab my glasses, putting them on to clear the final wisps of blurriness only to reveal a whirlwind of mismatched socks, wrinkled slacks, and as the cherry on top, I’d even messed up the buttons on my shirt. Dear God, when did you stop loving me? I sighed and moved to my nightstand to check the time, glimpsing the wind though my window as I passed, tearing at the trees fast enough to give me whiplash. It was almost enough to send me back under my covers and I nearly caved…but I couldn’t miss school today- not with so much to look forward to.
My seat in class was right next to Genevieve Poole’s, and she was just the most charming girl that the sun ever laid eyes on. On my first day of school I was late, and she’d shown me a shortcut through a little garden with these pretty white flowers. I haven’t been late since then, not only because of the new route, but also because I didn’t want to miss sitting next to her, especially since today Genevieve was going to sing the lead in…

Friday, January 17, 2014

2014 Scissortail: Author Biographies

Dorothy Alexander is a poet and storyteller from Cheyenne, Oklahoma. She has authored four poetry collections, including Lessons From an Oklahoma Girlhood, an ekphrastic collection of poems and visual art, and two volumes of oral histories. Her poems and non-fiction prose pieces have appeared in Sugar Creek Review, Blood & Thunder, Cooweescoowee, Sugar Mule Review, A&U Magazine, Oklahoma Today, Imaginary Family, Malpais Review, and others. She is a publisher of poetry and she facilitates poetry readings at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, and the Poetry @ the Paramount readings in Oklahoma City. Dorothy gratefully accepted the 2013 Carlile Distinguished Service Award bestowed by The Oklahoma Center for the Book and Friends of the Libraries in Oklahoma in recognition of her services to the Oklahoma literary community.

Alan Berecka’s poetry recently appeared in the San Antonio Express, and then shortly thereafter at the bottom of countless bird cages. His latest book With Our Baggage was released by Lamar University Press in July 2013. He is not sure he can claim that he works for a living, but he puts in his time as a reference librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Timothy Bradford is the author of the introduction to Sadhus (Cuerpos Pintados, 2003), a photography book on the ascetics of South Asia, and Nomads with Samsonite (BlazeVOX [books], 2011), a collection of poetry. His poems have recently appeared in Upstairs at Duroc, Interim, and The Fiddleback, and he has been a visiting writer/lecturer at Marist College and in the Red Earth MFA program at Oklahoma City University during the past year. Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University.

James Brubaker is the author of Pilot Season, a collection of flash prose pieces published by Sunnyoutside. His manuscript, a collection of short stories called Liner Notes, won the 2013 Subito Press Book Prize in Prose, and will be published later in 2014. James’s stories have also appeared or are forthcoming in Zoetrope: All Story, Michigan Quarterly Review, Web Conjunctions, Hobart, The Normal School, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Indiana Review, among others. James is currently teaching as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University, where he is also the Interim Associate Director of the First Year Writing Program.

Julie A. Chappell is a professor of medieval and early modern literature and creative writing at Tarleton State University. Besides numerous academic books and essays, her poetry has appeared in several anthologies including Revival: Spoken Word from Lollapalooza 94; Agave: A Celebration of Tequila in Story, Song, Poetry, Essay, and Graphic Art; and Elegant Rage: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie. She also has published flash fiction in Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal. Her first poetry collection, Faultlines: One Woman’s Shifting Boundaries, was published by Village Books Press in October 2013. Her memoir, The Jail/House Rocked, is in progress.

Kevin M. Clay is an Associate Professor at Tarrant County College-SE. He has a BA and MA in English from Tarleton State University, and a PhD in American Literature from the University of North Texas. He won the Hoepfner Prize in 2006 from the Southern Humanities Review for his short story "Cowboys." His fiction and poetry have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, The Sulfur River Literary Review, the William and Mary Review, and the British journal Staple. He lives in Arlington, Texas with his wife Elizabeth.

2014: Scissortail Schedule of Readings

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival
9th Annual: April 3 – 5, 2014
East Central University – Ada, Oklahoma

Thursday, April 3

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium

Ron Wallace – Durant, Oklahoma
Of Horses, Hawks and the World in Between
Maureen DuRant – Medicine Park, Oklahoma
Collect Call Home
Larry Thomas – Alpine, Texas
The Lobsterman's Dream (Poems of the Coast of Maine)

II. 11:00 – 12: 15 Estep Auditorium

J.C. “Catfish” Mahan – Edmond, Oklahoma
The Truth about The Truth
Elizabeth Raby – Santa Fe, New Mexico
Ransomed Voices
Alan Berecka – Del Mar College
With our Baggage

*** Lunch ***

Saturday, January 11, 2014

The Page One Literary Art Gallery Has Been Discontinued

2014 was the fifth and final Page One Literary Art Gallery. It has been a good run.  Thanks to all who made it possible!

Submissions are now being accepted for the Fifth Annual Page One Literary Art Gallery, which will be open for viewing on one night only: Friday, April 4th, 2014, from 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p. m. at the Ada Arts and Heritage Center at 400 S. Rennie Street in Ada, Oklahoma. 
Submissions:
· are welcomed from any writers--emerging or emerged--who would like to get in on the Scissortail vibe;
· may be in any creative writing genre (poetry, flash fictiongraphic fiction, excerpt from a longer work, etc.);
· must not be previously published or already accepted for publication elsewhere;
· must be limited to one submission per author;
· must include authors name, school affiliation (if any) and status (student, teacher, etc., if applicable) on a separate sheet;
· may be submitted via e-mail (as a Word attachment), snail mail (see addresses below) or dropped off in the box on office door Horace Mann 316A on the ECU campus;
"Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I " (1805-2807) by Jacques-Louis David
· must be submitted by 1 p.m. on Friday, March 28th;
· may be displayed at the Ada Arts and Heritage Center and may also be displayed on this website and at ecuenglishtalk;
· must be limited to a single page. Submissions that run longer than a page may be displayed in full on ecus englishtalk website, but when determining awards, judges will only consider the first page of the entry and only the first page of the entry will be displayed at the Ada Arts and Heritage Center.

The authors of outstanding submissions:
· will be identified by our panel of faculty judges;
· will be awarded with gift certificates designated for the purchase of books (authors scheduled to appear in the Scissortail reading program will not be in the running for these awards);
· must be in attendance at the Scissortail Wrap when the awards are distributed, one hour after the conclusion of the reading presented by Scissortail's featured speaker on Friday, April 4th, 2013 at the Ada Arts and Heritage Center;
· send your submissions to: sbenton@ecok.edu (subject line: Page One Literary Art Gallery) or mail to Steve Benton at Dept. of English and Languages, 1100 E. 14th Street, East Central University, Ada, Oklahoma 74820-6999.

This event enjoys the sponsorship and support of Literati (ECUs English Student Club), Originals (ECUs student-run creative writing journal), ECUs Sigma Tau Delta chapter(International English Honor Society), and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival. 

Click here to see photos and video from our 2013 Gallery.

We look forward to seeing you soon!