Dorothy Alexander is a poet, memoirist, storyteller, author of five poetry collections, two multi-genre memoirs, and two volumes of oral history. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Malpais Review; Sugar Mule Literary Review; Blood & Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine; Oklahoma Humanities Journal; Missing Persons, (Beatlick Press of Albuquerque); Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press of ABQ). She curated poetry readings at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Oklahoma for 15 years, and is a recipient of the Carlile Award for Distinguished Service to the Oklahoma literary community. She currently curates a monthly poetry reading at the Santa Fe, NM Community Convention Center under the auspices of the City of Santa Fe Bureau of Tourism. She co-owner with Devey Napier of Village Books Press, Santa Fe, NM. In two other lives, Dorothy was a tornado chaser for the National Weather Service, and then a lawyer and municipal judge for 45 years in Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle.
Jeffrey Alfier was a finalist for the Missouri Laureate Prize in 2021. In 2018, he won the Angela Consolo Manckiewick Poetry Prize, awarded from Lummox Press. In 2014, he won the Kithara Book Prize, judged by Dennis Maloney. Publication credits include Arkansas Review, Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Columbia College Literary Review, Copper Nickel, Emerson Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Kestrel, Gargoyle, Hotel Amerika, Los Angeles Review, Louisville Review, The Midwest Quarterly, New York Quarterly, Permafrost, Poetry Ireland Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southwestern American Literature, and Texas Review. His latest collection of poems is The Shadow Field (Louisiana Literature Journal & Press, 2020). He is also author of Gone This Long: Southern Poems, The Wolf Yearling, Idyll for a Vanishing River, Fugue for a Desert Mountain, Anthem for Pacific Avenue: California Poems, Southbound Express to Bayhead: New Jersey Poems, The Red Stag at Carrbridge: Scotland Poems, Bleak Music: A Photo and Poetry collaboration with poet Larry D. Thomas, The Storm Petrel: Poems of Ireland. He and his wife, Tobi, are founders of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review, a print publication of poetry and art (since 2009).
Rilla Askew is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction. She’s a PEN/Faulkner Finalist and recipient of three Oklahoma Book Awards, two Western Heritage Awards, and the American Book Award for her novel about the Tulsa Race Massace, Fire in Beulah. Her collection of nonfiction, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place, was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her essays and short fiction have appeared in AGNI, Tin House, World Literature Today, Translatlantica, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
17th Annual Scissortail: Featured Authors
LOU BERNEY
Lou Berney is the author of November Road (winner of the Dagger, Hammett, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity, and a Washington Post Best Book of 2018), The Long and Faraway Gone (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ALA awards), Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight, all from William Morrow. He’s also written a collection of stories, The Road to Bobby Joe, and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University.
JENNIFER CASAS GIVHAN
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous poet and novelist (author of Trinity Sight and Jubilee), who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. Her family has ancestral ties to the indigenous peoples of New Mexico and Texas, including Ysleta del Sur and the Tigua Indian peoples of the Ysleta region of El Paso.
Givhan earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and a Master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at California State University Fullerton. She has been awarded a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, a 2020 Southwest Book Award, an Honorable Mention for 2021 The Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino Focused Fiction Book Award category from the International Latino Book Awards Foundation, The 2019 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize chosen by Tyehimba Jess, Cutthroat Journal’s 2018 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize chosen by Patricia Spears Jones, The 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize chosen by Monica Youn, The 2015 Lascaux Review Editors’ Choice Poetry Prize, and The Pinch Poetry Prize chosen by Ada Limón.
Givhan’s poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, AGNI, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, POETRY, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Salon, The Rumpus, and Prairie Schooner, among many others.
ARTHUR SZE
Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, including The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021); Sight Lines (Copper Canyon, 2019), which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry; Compass Rose (Copper Canyon, 2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (Copper Canyon, 2009), selected for the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award in Poetry and a PEN Southwest Book Award; Quipu (Copper Canyon, 2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (Copper Canyon, 1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and an Asian-American Literary Award; and Archipelago (Copper Canyon, 1995), selected for an American Book Award.
His other books include River River (1987), Dazzled (1982), Two Ravens (1976; revised edition, 1984), and The Willow Wind (1972; revised edition, 1981). He has also published The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (Copper Canyon, 2001), selected for a Western States Book Award, and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (Trinity University Press, 2010). Pig's Heaven Inn, a bilingual, Chinese/English selected poems, was published in Beijing (Intellectual Property Publishing House, 2014).
His poems have appeared internationally in such publications as American Poet; The American Poetry Review; Boston Review; Chicago Review; Conjunctions; Field; The Georgia Review; Harvard Review; The Kenyon Review; Manoa; The Massachusetts Review; Michigan Quarterly Review; Narrative; The Nation; New England Review; The New Republic; The New York Times; The New Yorker; Orion; The Paris Review; Ploughshares; Poetry; Tin House; Triquarterly; The Virginia Quarterly Review; The Washington Post; Hotel Parnassus: Poetry International 2007 (Rotterdam); Kyoto Journal (Kyoto); Pamirs Poetry Journey: The First Chinese-English Poetry Festival, 2007 (Huang Shan, China); Promoteo (XIX Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, 2009); American Alphabets; The Best American Poetry (2004, 2019, 2020); Language for a New Century; The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses (1996, 2010, 2020) and Verse and Universe. His poems have been translated into thirteen languages: Albanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Burmese, Chinese, Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, and Uzbek.
He is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 8th Annual ‘T’ Space Poetry Award (2020), The Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers (2013), a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award (1998-2000), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1997), a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry (1995), two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1982, 1993), a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University (1991), five Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry grants (1980, 1983, 1994, 1997, 2012), and the Eisner Prize, University of California at Berkeley (1971). Sze was a Helen Zell Visiting Writer at the University of Michigan (2019), a Humana Visiting Scholar at Centre College (2012), a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University (2005), a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College (2004-2005), and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, Naropa University, and the University of Utah. He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.
Lou Berney is the author of November Road (winner of the Dagger, Hammett, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity, and a Washington Post Best Book of 2018), The Long and Faraway Gone (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ALA awards), Whiplash River, and Gutshot Straight, all from William Morrow. He’s also written a collection of stories, The Road to Bobby Joe, and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches in the MFA program at Oklahoma City University.
JENNIFER CASAS GIVHAN
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous poet and novelist (author of Trinity Sight and Jubilee), who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. Her family has ancestral ties to the indigenous peoples of New Mexico and Texas, including Ysleta del Sur and the Tigua Indian peoples of the Ysleta region of El Paso.
Givhan earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and a Master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at California State University Fullerton. She has been awarded a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, a 2020 Southwest Book Award, an Honorable Mention for 2021 The Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino Focused Fiction Book Award category from the International Latino Book Awards Foundation, The 2019 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize chosen by Tyehimba Jess, Cutthroat Journal’s 2018 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize chosen by Patricia Spears Jones, The 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize chosen by Monica Youn, The 2015 Lascaux Review Editors’ Choice Poetry Prize, and The Pinch Poetry Prize chosen by Ada Limón.
Givhan’s poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, AGNI, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, POETRY, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Salon, The Rumpus, and Prairie Schooner, among many others.
ARTHUR SZE
Arthur Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of eleven books of poetry, including The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2021); Sight Lines (Copper Canyon, 2019), which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry; Compass Rose (Copper Canyon, 2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (Copper Canyon, 2009), selected for the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award in Poetry and a PEN Southwest Book Award; Quipu (Copper Canyon, 2005); The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (Copper Canyon, 1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and an Asian-American Literary Award; and Archipelago (Copper Canyon, 1995), selected for an American Book Award.
His other books include River River (1987), Dazzled (1982), Two Ravens (1976; revised edition, 1984), and The Willow Wind (1972; revised edition, 1981). He has also published The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (Copper Canyon, 2001), selected for a Western States Book Award, and edited Chinese Writers on Writing (Trinity University Press, 2010). Pig's Heaven Inn, a bilingual, Chinese/English selected poems, was published in Beijing (Intellectual Property Publishing House, 2014).
His poems have appeared internationally in such publications as American Poet; The American Poetry Review; Boston Review; Chicago Review; Conjunctions; Field; The Georgia Review; Harvard Review; The Kenyon Review; Manoa; The Massachusetts Review; Michigan Quarterly Review; Narrative; The Nation; New England Review; The New Republic; The New York Times; The New Yorker; Orion; The Paris Review; Ploughshares; Poetry; Tin House; Triquarterly; The Virginia Quarterly Review; The Washington Post; Hotel Parnassus: Poetry International 2007 (Rotterdam); Kyoto Journal (Kyoto); Pamirs Poetry Journey: The First Chinese-English Poetry Festival, 2007 (Huang Shan, China); Promoteo (XIX Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, 2009); American Alphabets; The Best American Poetry (2004, 2019, 2020); Language for a New Century; The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses (1996, 2010, 2020) and Verse and Universe. His poems have been translated into thirteen languages: Albanian, Brazilian Portuguese, Burmese, Chinese, Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, and Uzbek.
He is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the 8th Annual ‘T’ Space Poetry Award (2020), The Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers (2013), a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award (1998-2000), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1997), a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry (1995), two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1982, 1993), a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University (1991), five Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry grants (1980, 1983, 1994, 1997, 2012), and the Eisner Prize, University of California at Berkeley (1971). Sze was a Helen Zell Visiting Writer at the University of Michigan (2019), a Humana Visiting Scholar at Centre College (2012), a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University (2005), a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College (2004-2005), and has conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, Naropa University, and the University of Utah. He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was the first Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives.
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Scissortail Submission Guidelines 2021-2022
We intend to hold an in-person festival. We invite submissions to be considered for the program. Please send your best work, while considering the following guidelines. Please follow exactly.
COVID DISCLAIMER: By submitting your work to be included as a participant and/or audience member of the 2022 Scissortail Festival, you voluntarily acknowledge that you have been vaccinated for COVID and/or you fully accept all responsibility for any potential health risk when gathering in these public events. By submitting work to be included on the festival program, applicants further agree to hold harmless the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival and East Central University. You also recognize that plans to hold an in-person festival, could be changed at the last minute, as necessary, due to unforeseen circumstances associated with Covid, and/or the festival could be canceled at the discretion of East Central University.
* We anticipate that authors will have up to 20 minutes to present their material – this is the total time at the mic, including any comments you make in addition to the presented material.
* 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.
* 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).
* Due to the number of participants, it is not possible to accommodate scheduling requests.
* 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.
* Sessions usually consist of 3 or 4 readers per session. Authors may plan for up to 20 minutes total time at the mic – including prose, including commentary. Please respect your audience and fellow readers by diligently adhering to time restraints.
Submit by email: 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 20, 2021. 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 on this website in order to receive notice of information regarding the festival and related events. Updates are posted here.
Hotel Arrangements
La
Quinta offers a Scissortail Festival Discount.
Call the hotel directly to book a room (580- 436-5000) and get the Scissortail Festival Group block rate.
Please be sure to book your room early to make sure
you receive the discount.
Scissortail Creative Writing Festival 2022 Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest
Prizes: * 1st - $100 * 2nd - $75 * 3rd - $50
(Plus Books & Honorable Mentions)
Guidelines:
Judge: Dr. Joey Brown, Professor in English at Missouri Southern State University. Joey holds an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Oklahoma and a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Oklahoma. She teaches creative writing (and other writing courses) at MSSU. Joey writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Concho River Review, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Quiddity, storySouth, and San Pedro River Review. She is the author of two poetry collections: Oklahomaography (Mongrel Empire Press), and The Feral Love Poems (Hungry Buzzard Press). Joey lives in Missouri with her husband, prose writer Michael Howarth, and their rescue dogs in their somewhat renovated house.
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 Rob Roensch. Information: http://www.okcu.edu/artsci/departments/english/redearthmfa
(Plus Books & 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 1, 2022. (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.
- Each institution is responsible for selecting its contestants
- 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) Institution4) 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.
Judge: Dr. Joey Brown, Professor in English at Missouri Southern State University. Joey holds an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Oklahoma and a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Oklahoma. She teaches creative writing (and other writing courses) at MSSU. Joey writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Concho River Review, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Quiddity, storySouth, and San Pedro River Review. She is the author of two poetry collections: Oklahomaography (Mongrel Empire Press), and The Feral Love Poems (Hungry Buzzard Press). Joey lives in Missouri with her husband, prose writer Michael Howarth, and their rescue dogs in their somewhat renovated house.
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 Rob Roensch. Information: http://www.okcu.edu/artsci/departments/english/redearthmfa
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
18th Annual R. Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest
East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma presents
Oklahoma’s Most Prestigious High School Writing Competition
Prizes to be awarded at ECU, Scissortail Festival, April 2, 2022
Fiction: 1st Place $250; 2nd Place $150; 3rd Place $100
Poetry: 1st Place $250; 2nd Place $150; 3rd Place $100
20 Honorable Mention Awards of $25 each
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) High School and Teacher’s name 3) Classification (senior, junior, etc.) 4) Phone number, Email and student’s mailing address (work submitted without a mailing address will not be judged).
* Work may be submitted through conventional mail or email.
DEADLINE: Conventional mail must be postmarked on or before Friday, February 11, 2022. Email entries must be sent by 11:59 p.m. on February 11, 2021. There will be no exceptions. Winners will be notified and awards will be presented to students during the annual Scissortail Festival at ECU, April 2, 2022. The names of winning writers will be posted on this website..
Poetry Submissions: send work electronically as attached files to jgrasso@ecok.edu or mail to Dr. Joshua Grasso, East Central University, Dept. of English and 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)
Thursday, March 11, 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)