Scissortail 2016: Press Release

Creative Writers to gather at East Central University

The 11th annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival will draw many creative writers and fans alike to East Central University in Ada, Okla., March 31-April 2, 2016.

Authors Naomi Shihab Nye and Dr. Ben Myers will be featured in addition to more than 50 author presentations from Oklahoma and beyond. All sessions are free and open to the public.

Myers was named Oklahoma Poet Laureate in 2015. He is a literature professor at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Okla., and an award-winning author and scholar. Myers was born and raised in Oklahoma and is the author of two books of poetry, Lapse Americana and Elegy for Trains. His poems have appeared in many prominent journals, including The Yale Review, Nimrod, 32 Poems, Poetry Northwest, The New York Quarterly and Borderlands.

After appointing Dr. Myers as State Poet Laureate, Governor Mary Fallin said, “Through his poetry, Dr. Benjamin Myers demonstrates a deep love and kinship to Oklahoma. His poetry about our state offers a nuanced view of our people, our land and the values that we hold dear.”

Born to a Palestinian refugee father and an American mother in Missouri, Nye’s voice as a writer is attributed to her experience as an Arab-American. Her poems often reflect heritage, peace and humanitarian spirit. In high school, she moved to Palestine, then Jerusalem and finally back to San Antonio, Texas, where she currently calls home. She earned her bachelor’s degrees in English and World Religions from Trinity University.

Nye is the author of numerous books of poems, including Transfer, You and Yours, which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award; 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, a collection of new and selected poems about the Middle East; Fuel, Red Suitcase and Hugging the Jukebox.

She is also the author of several books of poetry and fiction for children, including Habibi,,for which she received the Jane Addams Children’s Book award in 1998.

Nye’s work has won several awards including the Charity Randall Prize, four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. She was also elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2009.

The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival runs from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 2pm. on Saturday. Each day is broken into several sessions. For a complete schedule of readers, visit www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com

The Darryl Fisher High School Creative Writing Contest and a Collegiate Creative Writing Contest are held in conjunction with the festival. Winners will 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 or visit www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival: The Movie

Scissortail 2015: It's On!

As of 9:30 this morning, the Tenth 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!

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest

Prizes: 1st - $100 2nd - $75 3rd - $50
(plus a few Honorable Mentions)

Guidelines:
· Contest is open only to currently enrolled undergraduate students who attend the festival on Friday April 1, 2016 (no graduate level).
· To be eligible, undergraduates MUST be in attendance at the Festival, Friday April 1 (no fooling J please do not submit if you cannot attend the festival).
· Submissions must be confirmed by a sponsoring faculty member.
· 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) Faculty Member’s Name 3) Institution 4) Classification 5) Phone number, Email address.
· Submit work by email to Dr. Ken Hada at khada@ecok.edu (and please copy submission to khadakhada@gmail.com). In the subject line of your email submission, type “Scissortail Undergraduate Contest.”

Judge:  Dr. Paul Bowers, from Northern Oklahoma College will serve as the final judge for the contest. Professor Bowers is a nationally-recognized author with publications in Southwestern American Literature, Mid-American Review, and Indiana Review, among others, and critical essays on James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, and the contemporary Irish poet, John Montague. Honors for his fiction include a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Herman M. Swafford Award for Fiction. His collection of short stories, Like Men, Made Various, was published by Lost Horse Press in March 2006. His most recent publications include poetry in ’Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me’, an anthology featuring Oklahoma writers, as well as in the literary journals Sugar Mule, The Adirondack Review, and Poetry Quarterly, among others.

DEADLINE: Email entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. on February 1, 2016. There will be no exceptions. Awards will be presented Friday April 1 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (March 31 – April 2, 2016). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557.

From the Director: 2015

On behalf of the administration, faculty, staff and students of ECU, I welcome you, artists and guests, to the 10th annual Scissortail Festival. We are honored that you have chosen to spend time with us in Ada, Oklahoma. This year we welcome 15 new voices to the Scissortail Program. Every year we look forward to the quality presentations, so inspiring, so provocative. This year will be no different, I’m sure.

Though it sounds contrived, I saw my first Scissortail of this spring Thursday afternoon as I was driving to McAlester for a library discussion on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. A cold front with hail and high winds had passed through the night before, so I was surprised and delighted to see this harbinger among us already. Of course, I take that as a good omen for all of you traveling to Ada for this annual spring ritual.

As much as we need the Scissortails, and all other life forms of Nature, we also need the creativity expressed in the literature that our authors annually provide us. The library discussion of Coriolanus led to the consideration of the tension between individual liberty and social well-being, between pride and duty, how humanity was never intended to be only a raging war machine – as Shakespeare’s marred, single-minded hero becomes. One of the lessons of the play suggests that our physical nature needs to be balanced with a reflective, social nature – and that liberal democracy functions best in response to a collection of honest, balanced, reflective citizens. Duty to the common good may occur in many ways.

Though most of us are not as bluntly obsessed with warfare and physical arrogance as Shakespeare’s protagonist is, there are many sources that contend for our attention, that pull us awkwardly out of balance, that keep us from the necessary functions of reflection and inspiration. One of the best things about our annual Scissortail ritual is that we have the opportunity to engage one another with various creative voices, offering a variety of approaches to this human experience of living respectfully among each other. Comedy, tragedy, and every approach between will be on display, and the collective result is something we know we must value.

Ben Myers recently pointed me to this Flannery O’Connor quote: “I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.” And I remember Adam Nossiter’s New York Times Review quote referring to the horror, denial and coverup of the Tulsa Race Riot. Speaking of us he says, “a society so deeply unreflective is capable of just about anything.” I think between the reality of honest fiction and the ironic grace of poetry, we have the unique opportunity to reflect, to find courage and insight to balance our otherwise tipsy world. Scissortail Festival affords us this opportunity.


Often

Often I open the door to let in
the sound of rain tapping
along with a Brahms’ symphony
or the Allman Brothers – often
my pen cannot keep pace
with dropping water
or chilling violins
or the tragic guitars – often
I remind myself that rain,
like music, like a pen moving
on paper, is what the world
needs most. It could be
that the thunder outside
is no match for singing birds
at rainy dawn – the collection
of voices, a light that brings us home.

from Margaritas & Redfish

(Lamar UP, 2013)


Welcome! Enjoy!

Ken Hada

Winners of the 11th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

Poetry Winners
1st Place: Amanda Hiller, "Indian Summer" & "A Purple Columbine," Edmond Memorial High School. Teacher: Kelly Bristow
2nd Place: Caitlin Critchfield, "Things My Mother Told Me," Chickasha High School. Teacher: Jo Perryman
3rd Place: Cassidy Porter, "Puddles," Latta High School. Teacher: Holly Wood

Honorable Mentions:
Katy Felkner, "Roots," Norman North High School. Teacher: Kathy Woods.
Jayden Mills, "Completion Through Seeking," Chickasha High School. Teacher: Jo Perryman.
Arantxa Elizondo, "Starchild," Norman North High School. Teacher: Kathy Woods.
AshleyAnn Reese, "Feet To Toes," Moore High School. Teacher: Eileen Worthington.
James Bratton, "An Encounter With Diurnal Equivocators," Norman North High School. Teacher: Kathy Woods

Lynette Long, "Abandnoment," Norman North High School. Teacher: Kathy Woods.
Brayden Battershell, "Off the Screen," Chickasha High School. Teacher: Jo Perryman.
Nikki Kirby, "Untitled," Lawton High School. Teacher: Terry Freeman.
Kaolin Porter, "The Death of My Father," Edmond Memorial High School. Teacher: Kelly Bristow
Lillian Agee, "Dusty Photo," Lawton High School. Teacher: Terry Freeman

Fiction Award Winners
1st Place: Katelyn Elrod, “Detroit’s Finest Street Dwellers,” Chickasha. Teacher: Patty Shantz.
2nd Place: Zainab Sandhu, “Naveed’s Cricket Bat,” Norman North. Teacher: Kathy Woods.
3rd Place: Sawyer Robertson, “A Bed-time Story,” Norman North: Teacher: Kathy Woods.

Honorable Mention
Laekynn Parish, “The Lake of Tears,” Chickasha. Teacher: Jo Perryman.
Cheyenne Emo, “With Eyes Wide Open,” Moore. Teacher: Eileen Worthington.
Subhieh Matar, “Murder at the Theatre,” Deer Creek. Teacher: Jason Stephenson.
Noah Cowan, “The Person Boxer,” Edmond North. Teacher: Elizabeth Scott.
Aaron Wicker, “Finally Free,” Coleman. Teacher: Cara Dominick.
Katie Oldham, “The Haunted,” Westmoore. Teacher: Chelsee Lewis.
Tara Sepulveda, “The Fifth Boy I Kissed,” Claremore. Teacher: Jill Andrews.
Veena Muraleetheran, “The Truth of a Snapshot,” Norman North. Teacher: Kathy Woods.
Peter Biles, “Illusions, a City of Gold, and the Sea,” Latta. Teacher: Melinda Isaacs.
Molly Bray, “Britton Road,” Moore. Teacher: Eileen Worthington.

Scissortail After Dark

Scissortail 2015: The Poster

2015 Scissortail: Schedule of Readings

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

10^th Annual: April 2 – 4, 2015

East Central University – Ada, Oklahoma

Thursday, April 2

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium

Hank Jones – Tarleton State University

If You Put Words Together Just Right

Jessica Isaacs – Seminole State College

Deep August

Ben Myers – Oklahoma Baptist University

New Poems from One-Horse Oklahoma

II. 11:00 – 12: 15 Estep Auditorium

karla k morton – Denton, Texas

Constant State of Leaping

George McCormick – Cameron University

Inland Empire

Raquel Rivera –McKinney, Texas

Heathen

*** Lunch ***

III. 2:00 – 3: 30 North Lounge

Carol Hamilton – Midwest City, Oklahoma

Such Deaths

Terry Dalrymple – Angelo State University

Dead Dogs

Jennifer Kidney – Norman, Oklahoma

Some Things I Lost

Brady Peterson – Belton, Texas

Dust

IV. 2:00 – 3:30 Estep Auditorium

Rilla Askew – Kauneonga Lake, New York

Rhumba

Mark Allen Jenkins – Univ Texas at Dallas

Worse Places than Zanesville Ohio

Mary Stone – Missouri Western State University

Mythology of Touch

Alan Berecka – Del Mar College

Invested & Other Poems

V. 3:45 – 5:00 Estep Auditorium

Gary Worth Moody – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Skinned Light

A.J. Tierney – Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Cell

Alan Gann – Plano, Texas

A Teaching Artist Reflects

VI. 3:45 – 5:00 North Lounge

Andrew Geyer – Univ South Carolina -Aiken

Flight

Charlotte Renk – Athens, Texas

The Tenderest Petal Hears

Jim Wilson – Seminole State College

Koroviev and Behemoth

VII. 7:00 – Estep Auditorium

(Music by Jonathan Isaacs begins at 6:30)

Featuring Mary Kay Zuraleff 

(Reception for Authors to follow)

The 12th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest

East Central University Presents

Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition

Prizes awarded at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, March 31 – April 2, 2016
Fiction: 1st Place $200, 2nd Place $150, 3rd Place $100, 16 Honorable Mention Awards of $25 each
Poetry: 1st Place $200, 2nd Place $150, 3rd Place $100, 16 Honorable Mention Awards of $25 each

Guidelines:

* All Oklahoma high school students (9th - 12th grade) are eligible.

* Poetry (up to 100 lines) or Short Fiction (up to 6,000 words) is acceptable.

* Limit 3 poems and 1 short fiction piece per student.

* All entries must be the original work of the student.

* All entries must be neatly typed; please double-space fiction 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) Teacher’s name; 3) School 4) Classification 5) Phone number, Email and mailing address.

* Work may be submitted through conventional mail or email.

DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before February 5, 2016.  Email entries must be sent by 11:59 p.m. on February 5, 2016.  There will be no exceptions.

Winners will be notified in early March, and awards will be presented Saturday, April 2 at the Scissortail Writing Festival held on the East Central University campus, March 31 - April 2, 2016. A list of winners and winning entries may be posted on this website, which also has festival and contest history and previous award-winning Fisher contest entries.       

Poetry Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to jgrasso@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Joshua Grasso, East Central University, Dept. of English & Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820

Fiction Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to mwalling@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Mark Walling, East Central University, Dept. of English and Languages, 1100 E. 14th St., Ada, OK 74820

Contest Information: Dr. Joshua Grasso (580-235-3197); Dr. Mark Walling (580-559-5440).  Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Information: Dr. Ken Hada (580-559-5557)