Scissortail Creative Writing Festival returns in-person
XXII. 9:00 – 10:15 Estep Auditorium
Rob Roensch: Oklahoma City University
Unalaska
Mary Gray: Oklahoma City, OK
Who Do You Think You Are?
Paul Juhasz: Seminole State College
from Ronin
XXIII. 9:00 – 10:15 Regents Room
Michael Dooley: Tarleton State University
Go West, Young Longhair, Go West
Ann Howells: Dallas, Texas
from So Long as We Speak Their Names
Paul Austin: Norman, Oklahoma
This is Me
XXIV. 10:30 -11:45 Estep Auditorium
Michael Howarth: Missouri Southern State Univ
A Still and Awful Red
Julie Chappell: Cleveland, Oklahoma
Contrary Qualities of Elements
Dorothy Alexander: Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Art of Memory: Field Notes of an Octogenarian
XXV. 10:30 -11:50 Regents Room
Andrew Geyer: USC - Aiken
A Walk Beyond the Moon
Maryann Hurtt: Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
Of Peonies and Murderous Doings
Ben Myers: Oklahoma Baptist University
Ambition
XXVI. 12:00 – 1:00 pm Estep Auditorium
Grand Finale, Featuring:
Jennifer Givhan
Awarding the Dr. Darryl Fisher
State High School Contest Winners
LOU BERNEY
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 Master of Fine Arts program at Oklahoma City University.
JENNIFER CASAS GIVHAN
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 in Fine Arts in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and a Master of Arts 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, and many more.
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.
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ARTHUR SZE
Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of 11 books of poetry, including “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems;” “Sight Lines,” which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry; “Compass Rose,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Ginkgo Light,” selected for the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award in Poetry and a PEN Southwest Book Award; “Quipu;” “The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998,” selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and an Asian-American Literary Award; and “Archipelago,” selected for an American Book Award.
Other books include “River River,” “Dazzled,” “Two Ravens,” and “The Willow Wind” He has also published “The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese,” selected for a Western States Book Award, and edited “Chinese Writers on Writing.” “Pig's Heaven Inn,” a bilingual, Chinese/English selected poems, was published in Beijing.
His poems have appeared internationally and have been translated into 13 languages. Sze 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.