2026: Scissortail Biographies

Rilla Askew is the author of five novels, two books of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction. She’s a PEN/Faulkner Finalist and recipient of the WILLA Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her poems and essays have appeared in Nimrod, Tin House, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. “Convergence,” first published in AGNI magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

Actor and poet Paul Austin is the author of Spontaneous Behavior, the Art and Craft of Acting and Mother and Son, both published by Turning Plow Press, and Notes on Hard Times, published by Village Books Press. His work has appeared in This Land, Sugar Mule, Oklahoma Review, More Monologues by Men, and Newport Review. A collection of his writings, Late Night Conspiracies, was performed with jazz ensemble at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre. Austin will be reading from his latest collection.

Cody Baggerly is an Oklahoma poet from Chickasaw Country. His work has been featured in ECU's literary journal, Originals, the Rising Phoenix Review, the Dublin California Poetry Walk, Wingless Dreamer, Alien Buddha, White Winged Doves: A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology, Literature Today, San Pedro River Review, Dos Gatos Press, and the NoSleep Podcast. He has also presented his poetry at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, the Woody Guthrie Festival, and he is the host of the First Monday Open-Mic in Ada, Okla.

Wichitan Roy J. Beckemeyer is a Past President of the Kansas Authors Club. A retired engineering executive and scientific journal editor, he has authored five books of poetry and co-edited several poetry anthologies. His latest book, The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) was a 2024 poetry finalist for the Great Plains Book Awards. Previous books include Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019), Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018, winner of the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award), Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018), and Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014, a 2015 Kansas Notable Book). 

Alan Berecka, according to Microsoft’s Copilot, is an acclaimed American poet whose work deftly blends humor, storytelling, and insight into everyday life. Hailing from rural New York and residing near Corpus Christi, Texas, Berecka is a retired librarian and the author of several poetry collections, including “Atlas Sighs: New and Selected Poems,” His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including the American Literary Review. Currently, he is a regular contributor to the Texas Poetry Assignment and was included in Lamar University Press’s poetry anthology Southern Voices. From 2017-2019 served as the first poet Laureate of Corpus Christi. Lastly, Berecka is not a huge believer in artificial intelligence, believing its findings often tend toward grandiosity.

Peter Biles is the author of two novels, Hillbilly Hymn and Through the Eye of Old Man Kyle, and two short story collections, Keep and Last November. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Plough, Dappled Things, The Dispatch, Midsummer Dream House, and RealClearBooks & Culture. Born and raised in Ada, Oklahoma, he is now a PhD student in creative writing at Oklahoma State University.

Paul Bowers lives with his family on a small farm in northwestern Oklahoma. He is the author of a short story collection, Like Men, Made Various (2006), and three poetry collections: The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life (2016), Occasional Hymns (2018), and Ten Acres of the Universe (2022). His most recent collection of short fiction, We'll All Be Better People, is forthcoming.

Joey Brown is a poet and a fiction writer. She has authored two poetry collections: The Feral Love Poems (Hungry Buzzard Press) and Oklahomaography (Mongrel Empire Press). Her poems and prose have appeared in The Red Earth Review, Plainsong, Concho River Review, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Tulsa Review, Oklahoma Review, The San Pedro River Review, and other journals. Her poetry has been selected for several anthologies including Southern Voices: 50 Contemporary Poets (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). She’s an adjunct professor of Professional/Technical Writing at Missouri Southern State University, in the program she founded and directed for 24 years. Her current collection-in-progress, titled Turn Out the Lights: Poems from Busted Oklahoma, is her attempt to tell the story of the oil-busted Oklahoma landscape of her childhood. The poems submitted for Scissortail 2026 are from her side project, Birds & Respite,

Nathan Brown is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet who doesn’t live anywhere in particular. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14 and travels fulltime performing readings, concerts, workshops and speaking on creativity, poetry, and songwriting. Nathan’s published 30 books. Most recent is his new memoir, The Hidden Winter: The Birth of a Vagabond – Book 3. Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award. His earlier book, Two Tables Over, won the Oklahoma Book Award. His latest album of all original songs, The Streets of San Miguel, features Paul Simon’s accordionist, Joel Guzman and international fiddle champion, Warren Hood. His online live video series The Fire Pit Sessions—inspired by the Pandemic Poems Project—has had over 100,000 views. At almost 370 episodes now, Nathan reads a few poems from the project and performs a song at the end. Many followers of the series have referred to it as being one of the ways they’ve “made it through.” Naomi Shihab Nye said about Nathan’s book, My Salvaged Heart: “Brave new world! The sizzle of couplings and uncouplings – attraction and romance, ineffable magnetism, mysterious as ever – but doused with a savory dose of Nathan Brown humor, a tilted long-ranging eye that sees the next bend in the road even when he’s standing right here, firmly planted.”

In Corbett Buchly's first chapbook W/Make, now out from Bottlecap Press, he explores the nature of art and of art making. He has published more than 80 poems in over 35 journals, including SLAB, Rio Grande Review, Plainsongs, Black Manifold, North Dakota Quarterly, Barrow Street, and the Poetry Society of Texas Book of the year 2024, 2025, and 2026. His manuscript Roots Through Stone received the second place prize in the 2025 Poetry Society of Texas’s Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript contest. He is an alumnus of Texas Christian University and the professional writing program at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Northeast Texas with his wife and two children. You can find him online at buchly.com.

Tina Carlson is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Ground, Wind, This Body, We Are Meant to Carry Water, a collaboration with 2 other NM poets, and A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery which won first place in the 2024 NM/AZ book award for poetry. Her chapbook, Obsidian, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2024. Her essay, Mothers and Manta Rays, won second prize for non-fiction at Tucson’s Festival of Books 2025. She is an editor of the online journals Unbroken and Hot Flash Literary.

Durell Carter is a writer and teacher based in Oklahoma, where he shares his passion for literature with his students. He holds a Master's degree in English from the University of Central Oklahoma and, in 2023, released his first book, Mr. Monday Morning's Broken Songs and Testimonies. Carter has had work nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets Anthology, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poem “Views From the Red-Light Aquarium”. He has work published in Wild Roof Journal, Midway Journal, Posit Journal, Rising Phoenix Press, The Closed Eye Open, Petrichor, Fauxmoir, DC Life Magazine, and others. He is an Oklahoma Writing Project Fellow and served as Red Dirt Poetry’s first Director of Education.

In her former life as a professor of medieval and early modern English literature and creative writing, Julie Chappell published six books of scholarship and a collection of her original poetry, Faultlines: One Woman’s Shifting Boundaries (Village Books Press, 2013); as well as other academic and creative works. Since her retirement in 2018, she has added two collections of original short stories, Homecoming and Other Mythic Tales (Fine Dog Press, 2021) and Contrary Qualities of Elements (Fine Dog Press, 2023). She has also publilshed three more books of original poetry—Mad Habits of a Life (Lamar University Literary Press, 2019), As I Pirouette Away (Turning Plow Press, 2021), and Watermarks (Turning Plow Press, 2025). On November 8, 2025, she facilitated a Zoom poetry workshop for the Oklahoma Writing Project, part of the National Writing Project and, in December, was the co-facilitator with Hank Jones of a second poetry workshop for OWP. Her latest reading was on March 13, 2026 for the Mark Everett Allen Series in Norman, Oklahoma. She lives on Lake Keystone with her poet husband, Hank Jones, and serves five cats as their domestic.

Wendy Dunmeyer’s full-length collection, My Grandmother’s Last Letter, was published by Lamar University Literary Press. Her poetry has been selected as a finalist for the Morton Marr Poetry Prize; has received honorable mention in NDSU’s Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Chapbook Contest; and has appeared in Natural Bridge, The Oklahoma Review, Cumberland River Review, and most recently, The New Territory. She currently has one chapbook manuscript seeking a home; another chapbook manuscript in its final revision; and is illustrating her children’s book. She also volunteers at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.

Woodstok Farley is a former beach bum from South Florida living on the edge of West Texas, 25 miles north of the nearest Walmart. Now, instead of waves, reefs, and cypress-filled swamps, he lives on land full of mesquite, cactus, and a longhorn steer named Tip. He also shares the land with his beautiful bride of 45 years, a dog named Tallahassee, and a cat who comes when you whistle. Woodstok says he’s been writing all his life, telling crazy stories of beaches, swamps, and life on the road. His friends said he should write this stuff down. So, he did. The result was his first collection, entitled As the Wave Rose: Florida Tales and Other Wandering Stories, published by Fine Dog Press. His second collection, also by Fine Dog Press, tells of his wanderings among the hills of Oklahoma, entitled The Water Stop Saloon: More Wandering Tales. Woodstok’s third work is a noir novel set in his hometown entitled The Judas Coins. Soon to be released, he has just completed a collection of wisdom stories for his granddaughters, entitled Mont Jasper Diaries.

Mark Francis is the video/audio editor for the Division of Language Preservation with the Chickasaw nation. He also writes for the Chokma Magazine, the local tribal publication. He earned a BA in English from East Central University and became a journalist for several Oklahoma newspapers. He also earned an MS, with honors, in Native American Leadership from Southeastern Oklahoma State University. He enjoys reading and writing and has a different book in different rooms of his house. He enjoys writing short fiction and is yet to be published but still types away on the computer or writing with his pencil. He is working on a novel about an Indian man who lost his siblings when he was a teenager. 

Luke Fredette has been fascinated with the non-Western world since he was a child in the Central Valley of California, reading travel guides for Tibet and Bhutan, and he has sought to mediate between these two not-so-separate worlds in the form of his fiction ever since. He received an MA in Writing Popular Fiction from Edinburgh Napier University in 2022, and an MA in English from Idaho State University.

Beloved slacker and ne’er-do-well, Alan Gann hates writing third-person bios. A semi-retired teaching artist, he is a Multiple Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominee whose latest book from Assure Press, Better Ways to See, celebrates his parents with bird and ekphrastic works. Alan is the author of two other volumes of poetry, That’s Entertainment and Adventures of the Clumsy Juggler, as well as DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s performance poetry curriculum. Really, he’d rather be outdoors: biking, birding, and trying to photograph some of the cool things he sees there.

Corinne Gaston is a multidisciplinary writer, facilitator, and performer based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose place-based work focuses on nature, city landscapes, and family. Corinne has performed as a featured reader at OSU’s Live Lit Night, the Swan Song Studio’s Homegrown Open Mic, and the 2024 VERSES festival at the Tulsa Central Library. She is a 2025 Artists Creative Fund grant recipient, through which she created and led the 3-part poetry workshop series called Flaneuring Around Tulsa. Through this workshop, she took two dozen poets to write poetry at the Philbrook Museum, on Black Wall Street, and in the historic Heights neighborhood. The series culminated in a public poetry reading with live music in December 2025. Her poem For Evelyn won second place in the 2025 Gordon Parks Museum poetry contest. Her poem Coming Home won second place in the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry's 2024 Oklahoma Poem Contest in the adult category. Her work has appeared in Literary Orphans and Rose Red Review. She currently has fun writing a monthly dating column for the Tulsa-based publication The Pickup. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.

Ky George is a writer and educator living in Albuquerque, NM. A graduate of the Red Earth MFA, Ky explores the relationships between the land, her people, and whatever else is out there in the great beyond through poetry, essay, and fiction. They have previously been published in The Red Mesa Review, The Oklahoma Review, Insurrection, and Lesbians are Miracles. Their debut chapbook Common Prayers was published by The Leaves Poetry Press.

Andrew Geyer’s latest book is Southern Voices: Fifty Contemporary Poets (co-edited with Tom Mack). His individually authored books are the story cycles Lesser Mountains, Siren Songs from the Heart of Austin, and Whispers in Dust and Bone; and the novels Dixie Fish and Meeting the Dead. His other co-authored books are the hybrid story cycles Dancing on Barbed Wire and Texas 5X5, and the novel  Parallel Hours. He also co-edited the composite anthology A Shared Voice. Honors for Geyer’s fiction include an IPPY, an INDIE, and two Spur Awards. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, he currently serves as Writer in Residence at the University of South Carolina Aiken and Managing Editor at The Petrigru Review.

After over 40 years at Austin Community College, Lyman Grant now lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He has published several volumes of poems, including Symptom and Desire: New and Selected Poems. Many of his essays and reviews have been collected in Gladly: Reading, Writing, and Teaching in Texas.  Currently he is writing a biography of Texas writer William A. Owens. 

Joshua Grasso is a professor of English at East Central University, where he has taught classes ranging from Shakespeare to Comic Books to True Crime since 2006. He has a PhD in English Lit from Miami University, and a MA and BA from the University of Tulsa. As a writer, his speculative fiction has appeared in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia in markets such as Daily Science Fiction, Allegory, On Spec, Midwest Weird, and After Dinner Conversations. His first book of stories, Vanishing Acts, was released in December 2025. 

Aubrey Green has been all over the world, including almost a year in China, but she keeps coming back to Tulsa, OK. When she started her degree in creative writing she assumed she’d, you know, write. But a surprise love for the editing process moved her to start Blue Clover Editing, a freelance editing business. Now she polishes the work of many writers, is the managing editor and podcast host for eMerge Magazine, reads submissions for the online literary journal Apple in the Dark, edits anthologies, judges contests, and when she makes the time, still writes. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have won various awards and appeared in eMerge Magazine, The Talon Literary Journal, The Okie Bookcast, Brio magazine and others. She’s a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. She tries to ensure her husband, son, dog, and cats are all fed periodically.

Melissa Heath-Lee has a Master of Arts degree from Texas A&M University-Commerce and has been writing since she got her first all-caps typewriter at age six. She has written for various newspapers, had plays produced in the southwest, and her poems, short stories, and blogs have been published in journals such as: TriQuarterly, The Mayo Review, Green Eggs and Hamlet, and Forge. She is a member of the Oklahoma Writer’s Federation and McSherry Writers and lives in Oklahoma with her husband.

Crag Hill is poet and teacher educator at the University of Oklahoma. Hill has co-edited Level Land: Poems For and About the I35 Corridor (Lamar University Press, 2022) and The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics, 2012), a project that documents the art of word/image as it prepares to pivot off the page as digital tools begin to dominate production. His most recent poetry collection was 7 x 7. (Otoliths, 2010). He is also the co-coordinator of the long-running poetry series, The Mark Allen Everett Poetry Reading Series in Norman.

Angela Hooper has lived in Oklahoma City all of her life and has written poetry since she was 12. She received a BA in English from the University of Central Oklahoma. She has been affiliated with the Oklahoma City poetry community for 30 years and served a couple of tenures on the board of the Individual Artists of Oklahoma. Currently she is serving as the Program Director for the Last Sunday Poetry Readings at Full Circle Bookstore and assists with the readings at the Oklahoma Poetry House @1515 Lincoln Gallery. In August 2023.she released her first book of poems Where the Sky is a Wall (Village Books Press). She presented her poetry in April 2024 at the Scissortail Writing Festival. She is currently working on a new collection of poems and hopes to have them ready for publication in the Fall of 2026.

Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books include: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Several chapbooks (Black Crow in Flight and Softly Beating Wings) were published through contests. Ann’s work appears in many small press and university journals. She is an eight-time Pushcart and two time Best of the Net nominee.

Jessica B. Isaacs’s debut poetry collection, Deep August (Village Books Press), won the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Oklahoma Today, The Ekphrastic Review, Cybersoleil, Sugarmule, and Elegant Rage. She has presented her work at National and Regional Pop Culture/American Culture Conferences, Scissortail Creative Writing Festivals, and Woody Guthrie Festivals, as well as at many poetry readings across the state. She is the Dean of Instruction at Seminole State College, where she has also taught writing and humanities courses for 24 years. She makes her home in Prague, Oklahoma with her “river-bottom boy” husband and cuddly menagerie of rabbits, cats, and dogs.

Quinn Carver Johnson (they/them) is a poet, printmaker, and teaching artist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. They are the author of The Perfect Bastard (Curbstone Books, 2023), winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Poetry. Their work has also appeared in World Literature Today, Rappahannock Review, Right Hand Pointing, Cimarron Review, Red Earth Review, and elsewhere. Carver Johnson is a curator for the Woody Guthrie Center. They are the host of People's Poetry, a reading series dedicated to protest poetics. 

Hank Jones wishes he could retire, but likes a steady paycheck, and will probably keep working until his university fires him, which probably won’t be long as it’s part of the Texas A & M system. He wonders what role poetry plays when the world is collapsing all around us, suspects maybe that’s exactly when poetry is most needed.

Paul Juhasz is a two-time Pushcart nominated author of five books: Fulfillment: Diary of a Warehouse Picker, a mock journal chronicling his seven-month term as a picker at an Amazon Fulfillment Center; As If Place Matters, a collection of short fiction; and three collections of poetry: Ronin: Mostly Prose Poems, a finalist for the 2022 Oklahoma Book Award, The Inner Life of Comics, and The Fires of Heraclitus, a finalists for the 2025 Oklahoma Book Award. He served as curator and coordinator of the Woody Guthrie Poets from 2020-2024, and currently lives in Oklahoma City.

Abigail Keegan holds a Ph. D. British Literature and Queer Theory and is a Professor Emerita of Oklahoma City University. Keegan served as an editor for a women’s poetry journal, Piecework. She has published a book on the British Romantic poet, George Byron. Her poems have appeared in journals Pilgrimage Magazine, Malpais Review; Red Truck Review: A Journal of Southern Literature and Culture; The Blue Rock Review; Crosstimbers; The Scarab; The Winward Review; Switchgrass Review; Entrances and Exits: A Poetry Review; Sugar Mule’s special issue on Women Writing Nature; and in several anthologies: Ain’t Nobody Can Sing Like Me: New Writing in Oklahoma; Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets; Bull Buffalo and Indian Paint Brush (the Poetry of Oklahoma); A Peace Poetry Anthology; and Woody Guthrie Tribute anthologies edited by Dorothy Alexander. Keegan has also published three books of poetry: The Feast of the Assumptions, Oklahoma Journey, and Depending on the Weather, which was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Oklahoma Book Award by the Oklahoma Center for the Book.

Scott LaMascus writes in Oklahoma City, but prefers to be out on the Creek County ranch his mother's family has called home since 1937. His debut collection, Let Other Hounds, was longlisted for the Idaho Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in June, 2026. Poets Victoria Chang and Ellen Bass have praised the craft of the poems, many of which were workshopped in the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. Childhood sexual assault survivor Richard Hoffman, author of Love & Fury, has praised the poems' courage to break silence fifty years after sexual abuse at church. His 2025 chapbook, The Edited Tongue, depicts the horror, grief, and humor of a family's year with ALS, known as Lou Gerhig's disorder. His Oklahoma poems are forthcoming in 2027 from Lily Poetry Review Books. Since 2004, he has served as founder and director of the McBride Center for Public Humanities at Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, where he is professor emeritus.

Margaret Lee is a poet, scholar, fiber artist, watercolor sketcher, and aspiring naturalist in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her new poetry collection, Sappho Prompts with Finishing Line Pres, uses Sappho’s fragmentary lines as prompts for new poems exploring the myths, desires, and longings that characterize Sappho’s ancient songs. Her previous chapbooks with Finishing Line Press include Someone Else’s Earth (2021), Sagebrush Songs (2022), Oklahoma Summer (2023), and Orange Persephone (2025). Her poems also appear in From Behind the Mask, (Paperback-Press 2020), Echoes of Tradition: Indigenous Orientation to Community, Time, and Land (Tulsa NightWriters 2024), The Atlanta Review, eMerge Magazine, and Pangyrus. Her poetry book reviews appear in American Poetry Review, The Compulsive Reader, and the Taos Journal of Poetry. Margaret earned a B.A. in History from Seattle University, an M.Div. from Phillips Theological Seminary, and a Th.D. from the Melbourne College of Divinity. Her academic research and publications focus on the ancient Greek language and the history and culture of the ancient world. 

Gianna Loboda is a poet, bibliophile, and Vincent van Gogh enthusiast from Stratford, Oklahoma, though she prefers to claim her Italian New Jersey roots. She is a graduate from ECU, where she served as an editor for the Originals literary journal, and took home third place in the 2023 Scissortail Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest. She recently published a review of Dr. Hada’s collection, Visions for the Night, in World Literature Today magazine. Her poem "Striae Distensae" was recently published in volume 13 of the Iowa Carver College of Medicine’s literary journal The Examined Life.

A Pushcart honoree, with a personal essay in Pushcart Prize XLII, David Meischen is the author of Unbuckled: Poems (University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming, fall 2026) Nopalito, Texas: Stories (University of New Mexico Press 2024) and Caliche Road Poems (Lamar University Press 2024). Anyone’s Son, from 3: A Taos Press, was honored with Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2020. David’s work has appeared in The Common, Copper Nickel, The Gettysburg Review, Naugatuck River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. A former juror for the Kimmel Harding Nelson center for the arts, David is an alumnus of the Jentel Arts residency program. Co-founder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press, he lives in Albuquerque, NM with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Dr. Walter Moore (or Walt) is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. He holds a B.A. in English from DePauw University, anM.F.A. in Creative Writing from Texas State University, and a Ph.D. in American Studies, English from Purdue University. He’s written reading passages for an education textbook company, worked as a journalist for a few newspapers (San Marcos Daily Herald, Williamson County Sun, etc.), and published poems and stories in various journals (Experimental Poetry, Midwest Review, Marsh Hawk Review, etc.). His book of poems My Lungs Are a Dive Bar, a series of deadpan/gritty/neo-beat/punkish poems about rural Indiana and urban Washington (some Texas, too) was published by EMP Books in March of 2019. His first novel, The Phalanx of Houston (a coming-of-age story about a 26-year-old drifter-bartender with a G.E.D. who returns to his hometown of Houston, Texas, to solve a professional soccer player’s murder with his alcoholic father) was released by EMP Books in April of 2021. And his second book of poems (also by EMP), Tulsa Non-Poems was released in December of 2024. In the summer of 2019, Walt and LA-based director Eli Green sold a film screenplay called Cut, a story about bias, despair and redemption in urban law enforcement.

Phillip Carroll Morgan has authored or co-authored eleven books in several different genres since 2006, when his award-winning first volume of poetry, The Fork-in-the-Road Indian Poetry Store, was published by Salt Publishing in Cambridge, UK, as part of their Indigenous American Poets series. He has also authored or co-authored books of biography, history, literary criticism, and most recently, fiction. He contributed an essay to Famine Pots: The Choctaw–Irish Gift Exchange, 1847–Present (Michigan State U Press, 2020), and his second novel, The Lost River, Wordmaster II, was released in 2022 by White Dog Press. The readings for this event are part of his second comprehensive collection of poetry.

John Graves Morris has attempted to commit poems for over fifty years, a clear indication that he has trouble learning from experience. He has published one collection of poems entitled Noise and Stories and is still attempting to find a publisher for a second collection, entitled The County Seat of Wanting So Many Things, a chapbook entitled The Strongest Song, and a third collection tentatively entitled The Strongest Song also. His poems have most recently appeared in Isele Magazine and Volume One. A professor of English at Cameron University, he lives in Lawton.

Tom Murphy is a road poet and the 2021-2022 Corpus Christi Poet Laureate and the Langdon Review’s 2022 Writer-In-Residence. Murphy’s books: where does love go (2025), When I Wear Bob Kaufman’s Eyes (2022), Snake Woman Moon (2021), Pearl (2020), American History (2017), and co-edited Stone Renga (2017). He’s currently working on a book of short fiction. tom@tommurphywriter.com https://tommurphywriter.com

Benjamin Myers was the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and is the author of four books of poetry and three books of nonfiction. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Image, Nimrod, Rattle, and many other journals. He has published fiction in The South Carolina Review, The Windhover, and The Muleskinner. His book of sonnets, Black Sunday, was named one of "the five best books about the dust bowl" by The Wallstreet Journal. Myers teaches literature, creative writing, and Great Books at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he directs the honors program. He is also a contributing editor for The Front Porch Republic.

Brent Newsom received the 2020 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in poetry from Poets & Writers, and he wrote the libretto for A Porcelain Doll, an opera based on the life of deaf-blind pioneer Laura Bridgman. He is the author of Love’s Labors (CavanKerry Press, 2015), which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in poetry. His poems have also appeared in Southern Review, Hopkins Review, PANK, Cave Wall, and other journals.

Ashley Oakes grew up in Grove, Oklahoma and now lives in Tulsa where she works as an academic tutor. Her poems have appeared in Westview, Meetinghouse, Last Leaves, Bellevue Literary Review, Cypress Review, Glint and elsewhere. A reader at the 2025 Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Ashley is currently a contributor to the just launched Reading Series at Chariot Press.

Patrick Ocampo was a graduate student at Cameron University when he first attended the Scissortail Festival at the urging of his professor, Julie Hensley. It was at that festival where he secured his first major publication, a collection of poetry and short stories entitled Surface Tension, published in 2008 by Mongrel Empire Press. Since then, Mr. Ocampo has published poetry in the Oklahoma-based collections Agave: A Celebration of Tequilla, and Ain't Nobody Can Sing Like Me. Most recently he has completed his MFA in Creative Writing at the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. His thesis is entitled Reflections on a Fantastical Life, a collection of creative nonfiction exploring his lifelong fascination with pop culture, fantasy and science fiction. He is currently working on a series of animal stories entitled The Honey Badger Fables.

Luri Owen currently lives in Albuquerque, NM, where she teaches English at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute.  She has been writing poetry since high school and she loves to travel.  As she travels, she often finds inspiration along the way in the objects, events, food and people she encounters.  

Brady Peterson lives near Belton, Texas where for twenty-nine years he worked building houses and teaching rhetoric. For the past fourteen years or so he has been writing poetry and letters and is currently in training for the Great Divide Bicycle race. Training is a slow and limited process when one is 79. He is the author of Glued to the Earth, Between Stations, Dust, From an Upstairs Window, García Lorca Is Somewhere in Produce, and At the Edge of Town.

Gary Reddin is a writer from Oklahoma who currently makes his home in California. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Brevity, JAKE, Stone of Madness, Bull, Black Stone/ White Stone, The Windmill and elsewhere. His newest collection of poetry, Quantum Entanglement, is available now through Mouthfeel Press.  

Sally Rhoades received her MA in Creative Writing in 1995. She was formerly an R.N and a newspaper reporter. Her first book of poems, Taking Time, was published last March. She also has two chapbooks published by APD publishing, Where Light Falls and Greeted by Wild Flowers. This past September she read at The Otis Mountain Get Down, a music festival in its tenth year, which sits on the ancestral lands of the Kanienkelaka of the Haudenosaune Nation and the Odanak of the Abenaki people. In November, she participated in a community read of William Kennedy’s novel, Legs. She has been featured on Charlie Rossiter’s podcast Poetry Spoken Here and interviewed by Andrea Cunliffe for the Hudson Mohawk magazine at WOOC105.3 FM, a Sanctuary for Independent Media. She is published in Unlocking The Word, an Anthology of Found Poetry, Misfit magazine, Dragon Poet’s Review, 2, Elegant Rage, a poetic tribute honoring the centennial of Woody Guthrie, The Highwatermark Salo[o]n performance series by Stockport Flats, Up the River by Albany Poets and in Peerglass, an anthology of Hudson Valley peer groups. 

Linda Neal Reising, a native of Oklahoma and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, has been published in numerous journals, including The Southern Indiana Review, Comstock Review, and Nimrod.  Reising’s work has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (Harper/Collins) and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Press). She was named the winner of the 2012 Writer’s Digest Poetry Competition, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times. Her chapbook, Re-Writing Family History (Finishing Line Press), was a finalist for the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award, as well as winner of the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation Book Prize. The Keeping (Finishing Line Press), her first full-length book of poetry, won the Kops-Fetherling Phoenix Award for Best New Voice in Poetry. Her second full-length collection, Stone Roses (Kelsay Books), was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the WILLA Award, as well as winning the Eric Hoffer Award and the Western Heritage Book Award. VIVIA—The Legend of Vivia Thomas: A Novelette in Poems (Kelsay Books), was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the American Book Fest Award. It won the Feathered Quill Award and the Bookfest Award. Reising’s chapbook, Perpetual Astonishment, won the Beyond Words Chapbook Competition and was published in 2024. Navigation (Kelsay Books), her sixth book of poetry, was shortlisted for the 2025 Rubery Book Award and won both the Literary Titan and Regal Summit Book Awards. Her first collection of short stories, Cigar Box of Loss: Stories from Route 66, is forthcoming from Belle Point Press.

Jim Roberts is the author of the novel And Your Byrd Can Sing (Silent Clamor Press, January 2026) and the short story collection Of Fathers & Gods (Belle Point Press, 2024). The collection was named a finalist by Foreword Reviews for an INDIE 2024 Book of the Year Award. He has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice named to the finalist list for the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Award. His work has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Rappahannock Review, Reckon Review, Snake Nation Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and ArLiJo-The Arlington Literary Journal. Roberts grew up in rural East Texas and currently splits his time between Ohio and Texas. Visit jimrobertsfiction.com for more information on his work.

Rob Roensch is the author of a story collection, The Wildflowers of Baltimore (Salt, 2012), a novella, The World and the Zoo (Outpost19, 2020) and a novel, In the Morning, The City is the Prairie (Belle Point Press, 2023). His stories were included in the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Stories of 2018 and Best Small Fictions 2023 and listed as Distinguished Stories in the 2015 and 2022 Best American Short Stories. He has been awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the Peter Taylor Scholarship in Fiction from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Oklahoma City University.

Audell Shelburne is currently dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he has taught poetry and a few other classes over the years. In an earlier time, he served as chief editor of Windhover (2002-2010) and New Texas (2002). Last fall, two of his poems were recognized as winners of the Woody Barlow Poetry Contest at eMerge Magazine. He has published poems in various venues, such as eMerge Magazine, Equinox, Verse Virtual, and anthologies published by Dos Gatos Press. He recently fulfilled a goal of having more poems in print than he has candles on his cake, and now he's looking to achieve his long-term goal of getting a book of poems published.

Molly Sizer is a retired rural sociologist living in southwest Oklahoma. She has two degrees in sociology: a BA from the University of Arkansas and PhD from the University of Georgia, all a long time ago.  She’s read her poetry at Oklahoma’s Scissortail Creative Writing Festival and with the Woody Poets in Okemah, OK. She has poems published in several anthologies, as well as Westview and The Oklahoma Review. After past lives in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, Northern Virginia/D.C., Arkansas again, Oklahoma feels like home.

Stephanie Theban, retired after a career as a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, writes fiction and poetry. Her picture book, Alfred, was published by Doodle and Peck Publishing. 

Dr. Wade Gakudo Thompson is assistant professor of English and Soto-shu Zen Buddhist priest at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. 

Denise Tolan's work has been included in places such as The Best Small Fictions, The Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post, The Penn Review, Blue Mountain Review, Atlas and Alice, and Lunch Ticket. Her memoir, Italian Blood, was named a finalist for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Prize and a Reader's Choice Award.

Ron Wallace is an Oklahoma native and currently an adjunct instructor of Literature and Composition at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, in Durant, Oklahoma. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, five of which have been finalists in the Oklahoma Book Awards with Renegade and Other Poems winning the 2018 Award. Wallace has been a multiple “Pushcart Prize” nominee and has recently been published in Oklahoma Today, Dos Gatos, Emerge Magazine, and a number of other magazines and journals. Wallace has also written his first novel A Secret Lies in New Orleans which was a finalist in fiction in the 2022 Oklahoma Book Awards.

Sarah Webb taught English at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and for over a decade edited poetry for its interdisciplinary journal, Crosstimbers. Her collections Black and Red Riding Hood's Sister (virtual artists collective, 2013 and 2018) were named finalists for the Oklahoma Book Award. Black was also a finalist for the Writers' League of Texas Book Award. She co-founded the online writing group Just This: Zen and Writing and helps edit its online magazine Just This.

Cullen Whisenhunt is a graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program whose poetry has been included in a variety of journals. He has published two chapbooks of poetry with Fine Dog Press, Among the Trees (2021) and Childish Thing (2023). He is a contributing editor for the blog Archive Serendipities, where he researches early-20th century Oklahoma poets, and he currently teaches English at Eastern Oklahoma State College in McAlester, where he works with the McAlester Public Library Poetry Club and other area arts organizations. His first full-length collection of poetry, Until Air Itself Is Tinted (2024), was published by Turning Plow Press and received the 2025 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. 

Jessica Willingham has been nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology 2023 and 2024, appeared on the longlist for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2024, and received a nomination for Best Microfiction Anthology 2025. Her debut poetry collection was named a semi-finalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Belle Point Press in 2026. She is an Oklahoma State University alumna and a graduate of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project (2019–2021) in Denver, Colorado. Her work appears in The Citron Review, Hell is Real: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, Identity Theory, Roi Faineant Press, Still: The Journal, Mississippi Review, and Variant Literature, among others. She is from Tishomingo, Oklahoma.

Robert Wynne earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. A former co-editor of Cider Press Review, he has published 6 chapbooks, and 3 full-length books of poetry, the most recent being Self-Portrait as Odysseus, published in 2011 by Tebot Bach Press. He’s won numerous prizes, and his poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies throughout North America. Recently retired, he lives in Burleson, TX with his wife and their German Shepherd, Charlie. His online home is www.rwynne.com.

Zhenya Yevtushenko is just a guy trying to be a dude. He owes his inspiration to his family, friends, and to the love of his life, Olivia.