ADA, Okla. – The Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival returns to East Central University April 3-5, 2025, marking the milestone 20th festival to take place.
ire’ne lara silva, Julie Hensley and festival director, Ken Hada, will be the featured authors this year. The event is free and open to the public.
The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival features Oklahoma’s most prestigious high school creative writing competition. The Annual Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest, now in its 21st year. It is open to all state high school students submitting poetry or short works of fiction. Winners and awards for the state-wide competition, as well as the Undergraduate Contest, will be presented concurrent with the event.
The three-day festival attracts an array of known and up-and-coming authors from across Oklahoma and the country. More than 60 authors will be reading in 20-plus sessions. The schedule and updates are available at ecuscissortail.blogspot.com/.
For more information on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival or questions about group attendance, email organizer Dr. Ken Hada at khada@ecok.edu.
Below are bios for each of the featured speakers. Full bios and information on all authors participating can be found on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival blog.
ire’ne lara silva
ire’ne lara silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán.ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award.
Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body. Her first comic book, VENDAVAL, will be released by the Chispa Imprint of Scout Comics in April 2024. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com
Julie Hensley
Julie Hensley is the author of the chapbook, THE LANGUAGE OF HORSES (Finishing Line Press), and the books, VIABLE: Poems (Five Oaks Press 2015) and LANDFALL: A Ring of Stories (Ohio State University Press 2016).
An Associate Professor at Eastern Kentucky University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA Program, Hensley lives in Richmond with her husband, the writer R. Dean Johnson, and their two children.
Dr. Ken Hada
Ken Hada lives and writes in rural Pottawatomie County, Okla. He finds inspiration from the Natural world, both at home and in his travels. Author of twelve collections of poetry, including his latest: Visions for the Night and Come Before Winter, from Turning Plow Press. His previous collection, Contour Feathers (Turning Plow Press, 2021) received the Oklahoma Book Award. Other works of his have been awarded by The Western Writers of America, The National Western Heritage Museum, South Central Modern Language Association and The Oklahoma Center for the Book. Four of his poems have been featured on "The Writer's Almanac."
In addition to his poetry, Ken remains active in scholarship, writing and publishing regularly on regional writing, literary ecology and multicultural literatures. The “Ken Hada Collection” is held at the Western History Collection Library at the University of Oklahoma. He is a professor at East Central University, where he has directed the annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival for 20 years. He enjoys reading his work and giving workshops around the country. More information available at kenhada.org.