Friday, January 13, 2017

2017: Schedule of Readings


12th Annual: Scissortail Creative Writing Festival
April 6-8, 2017
East Central University
Ada, Oklahoma

Thursday, April 6

I. 9:30 – 10: 45 Estep Auditorium  

Brady Peterson – Belton, Texas
From an Upstairs Window
Rebecca Hatcher Travis – Sulphur, Oklahoma
Constant Fires
Michael Dooley – Tarleton State University
Mary, Mother of …

II. 11:00 – 12: 15 Estep Auditorium

Elizabeth Raby – Santa Fe, New Mexico
A Matter of Time
Paul Bowers – Northern Oklahoma College
The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life
Dorothy Alexander – Santa Fe & Oklahoma City
Birds, Bees and Misogyny: Verse & Paragraphs

*** Lunch ***

III. 2:00 – 3: 15 North Lounge

George McCormick – Cameron University
Saints
Sarah Webb – Burnet, Texas
What the Moon Saw
Jim Benton – Ft. Worth, Texas
Poems of the Scissortail’s Nest

IV. 2:00 – 3:15 Estep Auditorium

John Morris – Cameron University
On Wickedness, Art and Solubility
Mary Anna Evans – University of Oklahoma
Only a Time Machine
Gary Worth Moody – Santa Fe, New Mexico
Upon Fevered Ground

V. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Jennifer Kidney – Norman, Oklahoma
Deadhead, Hog Farm, Grass and Other Things
William Peter Grasso – Tulsa, Oklahoma
Just a Matter of Time …
Greg Stapp – Norman, Oklahoma
Whatever Counts as Blood among Locusts

VI. 3:30 – 4:45 North Lounge

Tom Murphy – Corpus Christi, Texas
Prometheus Unbound
Carol Coffee Reposa – San Antonio, Texas
Incident at a Party
Richard Dixon – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Winding Stair

VII. 7:00 – Estep Auditorium
                       
(Musical Prelude: begins at 6:30pm)

Featuring: Patricia Hampl

(Authors’ Reception follows at Vintage 22)

Friday, April 7

VIII. 9:00 – 9:50 Estep Auditorium

Sally Rhoades – Albany, New York
Through the Layers
Rob Roensch – Oklahoma City University
Victor, Jonah, Laney

IX. 9:00 – 9:50 North Lounge

Jessica Issacs – Seminole State College
The Deer in the Corn & Other Poems
Michael Howarth – Missouri Southern State U
Scream Three Times

X. 10:00 – 10:50 Estep Auditorium

Paul Austin – Norman, Oklahoma
Portraits
Michelle Hartman – Ft. Worth, Texas
Lost Journal of My Second Trip to Purgatory

XI. 10:00 – 10:50 North Lounge

Shaun Perkins – Locust Grove, Oklahoma
The Book with the Beacon Lights
Juan Perez – Corpus Christi, Texas
Protesting Politically

XII. 11:00 – 11:50 Estep Auditorium

Ben Myers – Oklahoma Baptist University
Poems in Various Forms
Roxie Faulkner Kirk – Morris, Oklahoma
The Northeast Corner Section

XIII. 11:00 – 11:50 North Lounge

Joey Brown – Missouri Southern State U
Cross-Cut Stanzas
Todd Fuller – University of Oklahoma
Cherry Kool-Aid vs. Post-Truth America

*** Lunch ***

XIV. 2:00 – 3:15 North Lounge

Clarence Wolfshohl – Fulton, Missouri
Scattering Ashes
Terri L. Cummings – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
The Nature of Nature
Ron Wallace – Durant, Oklahoma
Songs for Lesser Gods

XV. 2:00 -3:15 Estep Auditorium

Alan Berecka – Del Mar College
The Hamlet of Stittville
Margaret Dornaus – Ozark, Arkansas
Prayer for the Dead: Recently Collected Poems
Terry Lucas – Mill Valley, California
A Small Desert Town

XVI. 3:30 – 4:45 Estep Auditorium

Katherine Hoerth – U.T. –Rio Grande Valley
Revisionist Mythmaking in Texas
Chera Hammons – Amarillo, Texas
Born under a Bright Horizon
J.C. “Catfish” Mahan – Edmond, Oklahoma
I Hate Poetry

XVII. 3:30 – 4:45 North Lounge

Dan Wilcox – Albany, New York
Where’s the Nearest Ocean?
Jennifer Luckenbill – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
The Water Below
Lyman Grant – Austin Community College
Old Men on Tuesday Mornings

XVIII. 7:00 Estep Auditorium

Featuring Leif Enger
                       
(Musical prelude at 6:30 pm)

Saturday, April 8

XIX. 9:00– 10:15 Estep Auditorium

Ann Howells – Carrollton, Texas
Conjuring the Chesapeake
A.W. Marshall – Tulsa, Oklahoma
The Bend
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish – Oklahoma City U
Elegies & Love Poems

XX. 10:30 -11:45 Estep Auditorium

Andrew Geyer – Univ. of South Carolina-Aiken
Symmetry
Jenny Yang Cropp – Cameron University
Poems from Concordance
Nathan Brown – Wimberly, Texas
Don’t Try

XXI. 12:00 – 1:00 pm Estep Auditorium

Grand Finale: Rilla Askew
University of OklahomaSnake Season
           
& Awarding the Dr. Darryl Fisher
State High School Contest Winners

2017: Scissortail Biographies


Dorothy Alexander, author of four poetry collections and one memoir, is a founding member of the Oklahoma Woody Guthrie Poetry Readers. Her work, deeply rooted in Oklahoma, embraces a form she calls “narcissistic narrative.” She also indulges in “selfie” poetry. Her publications include a volume of ekphrastic poetry and art, Lessons From and Oklahoma Girlhood, The Art of Digression, a Memoir in Fragments, Borrowed Dust, The Dust Bowl Revisited, as well as poems and essays in several anthologies. Dorothy received the 2013 Carlile Distinguished Service Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. In an alternate universe she is a lawyer and a municipal judge in rural western Oklahoma. She spends 35%  of her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with her spouse, Devey Napier.

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels and a book of stories. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. Her recent novel, Kind of Kin, is published by Ecco Press, and her collection of essays, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place will be forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in 2017. She is married to actor/writer Paul Austin, and they live in Norman, where Askew teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

Scissortail Creative Writing Contest for Undergraduates

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 7, 2017 (no graduate level).
  • To be eligible, undergraduates MUST be in attendance at the Festival, Friday April 7. 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 scissortailfestival@gmail.com (and please copy submission to khada@ecok.edu). In the subject line of your email submission, type “Undergraduate Contest.”
  •  ECU faculty will screen initial entries, then an outside judge will judge all entries that meet minimum guidelines.

DEADLINE: Email entries must be received by midnight February 24, 2017. There will be no exceptions. Awards and recognition will occur Friday April 7 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (April 6-8, 2017). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557.

Judge:  Award-winning poet and professor Ron Wallace will serve as the 2017 judge. Ron is the author of six volumes of poetry published by TJMF Publishing of Clarksville, Indiana and a three time finalist in the Oklahoma Book Awards. He is also a three time winner of The Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Best Book of Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2016. His work has been recently featured in Oklahoma Today, Poetry Bay, Concho River Review, Cybersoleil journal, Cobalt, Red Earth Review, Dragon Poets Review, Songs of Eretz Review, Gris-Gris, Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets and a number of other magazines and anthologies.

Sponsors: The Undergraduate Writing Contest is sponsored by The East Central University Foundation, Inc, in partnership with THE RED EARTH MFA program from Oklahoma City University, directed by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish. Red Earth representatives will be at the 2017 Scissortail Festival. Information about Red Earth MFA is available at http://www.okcu.edu/artsci/departments/english/redearthmfa