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ADA 鈥� The annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival returns 鈥� in person 鈥� to 成人B站 campus March 31-April 2, marking the 17th festival to take place.
A trio of celebrated authors 鈥� Arthur Sze, Jenn Givhan and Lou Berney, are the featured authors this year. The event is open and free to the public.
The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, as always, features Oklahoma鈥檚 most prestigious high school creative writing competition, now in its 18th year. The annual Darryl Fisher Creative Writing Contest is open to all state high school students submitting poetry or short works of fiction. Awards for the state-wide competition will be announced on Saturday, April 2. Winners from the Undergraduate Contest will be presented Friday, April 1 at the Estep Multimedia Center.
Sze, Berney and Givhan will highlight the three-day festival, which attracts some of the best known and unknown writing talents from around the country. More than 70 authors will be a part of the festival. The schedule and updates are available at .
For more information on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival or questions about group attendance, contact organizer Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557 or via email at khada@ecok.edu.
Following are bios on the three featured writers. Full bios and other authors can be found at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival Blog mentioned above.
LOU BERNEY
Berney is the author of 鈥淣ovember Road鈥� (winner of the Dagger, Hammett, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity, and a 鈥淲ashington Post Best Book鈥� of 2018), 鈥淭he Long and Faraway Gone鈥� (winner of the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, and ALA awards), 鈥淲hiplash River,鈥� and 鈥淕utshot Straight,鈥� all from William Morrow.
He鈥檚 also written a collection of stories, 鈥淭he Road to Bobby Joe,鈥� and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as 鈥淭he New Yorker,鈥� 鈥淧loughshares,鈥� 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 鈥淭rinity Sight鈥� and 鈥淛ubilee鈥�), 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鈥檚 poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in 鈥淭he New Republic,鈥� 鈥淭he Nation,鈥� 鈥淏est of the Net,鈥� 鈥淏est New Poets,鈥� 鈥淎GNI鈥�, 鈥淭riQuarterly,鈥� 鈥淧loughshares,鈥� 鈥淧OETRY,鈥� 鈥淏oston Review,鈥� 鈥淐razyhorse,鈥� 鈥淏lackbird,鈥� 鈥淭he Kenyon Review,鈥� 鈥淣ew England Review,鈥� 鈥淪alon,鈥� 鈥淭he Rumpus,鈥� and 鈥淧rairie Schooner,鈥� among many others.
ARTHUR SZE
Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of 11 books of poetry, including 鈥淭he Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems;鈥� 鈥淪ight Lines,鈥� which won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry; 鈥淐ompass Rose,鈥� a Pulitzer Prize finalist; 鈥淭he Ginkgo Light,鈥� selected for the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award in Poetry and a PEN Southwest Book Award; 鈥淨uipu;鈥� 鈥淭he Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998,鈥� selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and an Asian-American Literary Award; and 鈥淎rchipelago,鈥� selected for an American Book Award.
Other books include 鈥淩iver River,鈥� 鈥淒azzled,鈥� 鈥淭wo Ravens,鈥� and 鈥淭he Willow Wind鈥� He has also published 鈥淭he Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese,鈥� selected for a Western States Book Award, and edited 鈥淐hinese Writers on Writing.鈥� 鈥淧ig's Heaven Inn,鈥� 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.