Scissortail Creative Writing Festival 2019 Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest

Prizes: * 1st - $100 * 2nd - $75 * 3rd - $50

(Plus Books & Several Honorable Mentions) 

Guidelines: 

• Contest is open only to currently enrolled undergraduate students.
• Eligible students are expected to attend the Festival. Recognition will occur Friday evening, April 5. (Please do not submit if you cannot attend the festival). 
• Submissions must be confirmed by a sponsoring faculty member. 
• Each institution is allowed a maximum of 5 (five entries); This includes ECU.
• 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 writing. 
• 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 separate Cover page with contact information: 1) Student’s Name; 2) Student’s email address AND mailing address 3) Faculty Member’s Name & Email address 3) Institution 4) Classification 5) Phone number 6) Title of original work submitted 
• Submit work by email to Dr. Jennifer Dorsey at jdorsey@ecok.edu. In the subject line of your email submission, type “Scissortail Undergraduate Contest.” 
• Professor Dorsey will screen initial entries, then an outside judge will judge all entries that meet minimum guidelines. 

DEADLINE: Email entries to jdorsey@ecok.edu must be received by midnight March 1, 2019. There will be no exceptions. Recognition of writers will occur Friday April 5 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (April 4-6, 2019). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557 for information regarding the Festival 

Judge: Alan Berecka earns his keep as a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. He wrote a creative thesis at the University of North Texas in 1987. Since then has published four collections of poems, the latest of which is The Hamlet of Stittville. Among other places, his poetry has appeared in periodicals such as The Texas Review, The American Literary Review, The Christian Century and the anthologies: Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets and the St. Peter’s B-list by Ava Maria Press. In 2017 he was named the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.

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. Information: http://www.okcu.edu/artsci/departments/english/redearthmfa 

Scissortail Submission Guidelines

14th Annual Scissortail Festival, April 4-6, 2019

Approximately 60 authors will be selected for the program. Selections (and rejections) are determined by members of the ECU English faculty. Selections to the program are accepted on the basis of:

• Quality, Published Work (peer-reviewed journals, for example)
• Freshness of Material (reading some new stuff)
• Appropriateness for Time Restraints and Subject Matter 
• Meeting the Submission Deadline

Keeping with the spirit of the Scissortail Festival, readers on the program are expected to support other readers by attending multiple sessions.

Unaccepted submissions often do not reflect quality of writing – space, time and personnel limit our ability to accept as many as we would like. All applicants (those accepted and those not accepted for the program) are cordially invited to attend the festival to enjoy the benefits of interacting with fellow authors (the festival hotel rate is available for all guests of the festival).

Please review the following guidelines before submitting. To fit a very tight schedule, authors will have 15 minutes to present their material. Fiction and creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to excerpt their submission to fit into the time restraints (The appeal of a narrative may, in fact, be heightened by presenting a carefully selected excerpt, rather than speed-reading).

Guidelines: Please read closely and follow exactly. Please look at your calendar before submitting! Due to the increasing number of festival participants, 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 15 minutes total time at the mic (including prose) depending on how the session is scheduled. Please respect your audience and fellow readers by diligently adhering to time restraints.

Email submissions are preferred. Submit: 1) complete contact information 2) the title of your program and the 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 December 30, 2018. The schedule will be announced as early as possible, in January) and certainly by early February at the latest.

Send email submissions to: scissortailfestival@gmail.com. Identify “Scissortail Submission” in the subject line.

Please check your calendar before submitting. Participants are not charged registration fees, nor are authors compensated. Please subscribe by providing your email at ecuscissortail.blogspot.com in order to receive notice of information regarding the festival and related events. Updates are posted at that site.

The 15th 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, April 4-6, 2019

Fiction: 1st Place $200; 2nd Place $150; 3rd place $100

Poetry: 1st Place $200; 2nd Place $150; 3rd place $100
20 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 5 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 (senior, junior, etc.) 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 Friday, February 1, 2019 Email entries must be sent by 11:59 p.m. on February 1, 2019. There will be no exceptions. Winners will be notified in early March, and awards will be presented Saturday, April 6 in the Cole University Center (Estep Auditorium), on the East Central University campus. A list of winners and winning entries may be posted online at www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com. Please visit this site for festival and contest history and information. Previous award-winning Fisher contest entries are also available . 

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)