Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Saturday, April 8 — Grand Finale

In addition to the great roster of readers throughout the last few days, the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival includes the Darryl Fisher High School Creative Writing Contest, this the 13th year of the event. Prizes were presented tonight to the winners in both categories, Poetry (by Joshua Grasso) & Fiction (by Mark Walling). There were prizes presented for 1st, 2nd & 3rd place & 8 honorable mentions in each category to high school writers from all over the state. The complete list of winners can be found at the Scissortail Blog.

Following the awards the final reader of the festival was perennial Scissortail favorite, Rilla Askew. She is best known for her fine novels chronicling the history & people of Oklahoma, as in her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, & the more recent Kind of Kin. She has a collection of essays forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place.

Today, she brought the festival to a close with a reading of “Snake Season,” using personal memory & stories of her family to ponder the effects of climate change, & using the image of a rare ice-storm to wonder about how we all inch slowly, but inevitably, towards death. A story-teller & a philosopher.

& so the festival also came to an end. But the friendships continue, the writers continue to write & the scissortails continue to flit across the highways & fields of Oklahoma.

Thank you Ken Hada & the faculty, staff & students of East Central University for another festival of sharing words.
Peace.