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)