Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Scissortail After Dark, April 3

After the evening reading we partied at the Ada Arts & Heritage Center for jazz standards by The Moonlighters Combo, then a classic open mic. The readers were a mix of students from ECU, writers who had read in the Festival & some community poets — I felt right at home.

The host was Jonathan Kelly who also signed himself up on the list.

First up was Brian Mitchell who started us off with a poem with Carl Sagan making the universe from his bedroom, then, of all things, a villanelle, “Rock Paper Scissors” about competing for a girl.

Catfish joined us with a couple of his quirky poems, “Pocket Altar” (smart phones making us one with the universe) & the marvelously titled “The Bean of Efficiency.”

Lisa M. Pire had told me earlier she ran an open mic right here in Ada on the last Monday of the month. Her first poem was about defining herself against everyone else’s labels, then on to other poems ranging from a long list love poem to “Pro What?” an angry response to her father’s political post on FaceBook.

A poet who identified himself as “Sher-man” & said he was a Freshman at ECU read a poem titled “The Path to Love” that took us up in the wind & clouds, falling off the Earth into a kiss & love.

Matt Calvert read from the ECU lit magazine Originals his poem “The Tide Rips the Night Wide Open” then a cento titled “Soul Unction” using lines from poems in Best American Poetry 2014.

Tori Watson also read from Originals; her poem was titled “Rape Culture,” then a piece of flash fiction “Cats Really Aren’t that Bad.”

This was when our host Jonathan Kelly stepped up to read, “Gators & Cross,” then "5AM" (working on his computer & wondering about his next crush),  & “Heart Specialist.”

Ana Tinski said she lives here in Ada, has been attending the readings at Scissortail, read “Cornflower Blue Day,” then 2 poems to father in Wyoming “Whereabouts” & “Where Wild Mustangs Go.”

Shamika Sanders also read a poem to her father “What Happened,” then an untitled piece on racism, written today.

I was next & read my poem written after my first trip here “Oklahoma Sunday” then, for the holiday, “What Passover Has Taught Me.”

Jessica Isaacs who had read in the first session of Scissortail read a poem by Greg Rogers titled “Black Dutch” a term sometimes used by Native people to mask their native heritage.

The last poet in the open mic was the other Albany poet, Sally Rhoades, who read a poem about her father, “The Sky is my Witness,” then the celebratory “I Want to Be Swathed in Beauty,” & a poem written after the last time she was at Scissortail, about wanting to explore her own heritage, “I Can’t Hear You.”

Wherever I go in this country I seem to be able to find open mics, poets everywhere reading to each other.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Afternoon Sessions, Evening Feature, April 3

Sunnie Smith from the English Department here at ECU was the moderator for the first afternoon session in the North Lounge, & the first reader up was Jason Poudrier.

I’ve been following Jason’s work since first introduced to it, & him, in 2011. He is an Army veteran, who had been deployed to Iraq in 2003 & awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded in action. He published poems about his experience, first in the chapbook In the Rubble at Our Feet (Rose Rock Press, 2011), then expanded to the full-length collection Red Fields: Poems from Iraq (Mongrel Empire Press, 2012). The poems stand shoulder to shoulder with the finest of poetry by soldiers (Brian Turner’s Here Bullet comes immediately to mind). Today he read from an as-yet-untitled novel-in-progress set in wartime Iraq. The episodes he read were grim (a soldier keeps an insurgent’s severed finger as a souvenir) & funny (as he & his buddies discuss what to do with it), reminding me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, even of the absurd banter I overheard in the barracks oh so many years ago. I’ll be first in line to buy it when it is published. (Note: Jason is also the Event Director of the Second National Military Experience & the Arts Symposium to be held May 14 - 17 at Cameron University, Lawton, OK, bringing together veterans & artists in all genres — check it out at www.militaryexperience.org)

Michelle Hartman came out swinging & didn’t stop until she had broken the skulls of any politician, especially Republicans, in her sights (fortunately there were none in the room). She began with poems from her earlier book Disenchanted & Disgruntled (Lamar University Press, 2013), with poems like “8 Tweets from Washington” commenting on the new members of Congress, with clever, silly hashtags, & another poem about dragons dining on the 1%, showing no mercy to even to Democrats. She then turned to poems from her new book Irony & Irreverence (Lamar University Press, 2015) which she described as “just bitter.” One poem compared Ted Cruz to the legendary cryptid Chupacabra, another (“Perspective #14”) took on Republican poetry (?!), while “W.S. Merwin Has to Die” was commentary on the call for entries for literary journals. “Outrageous” is a good word to describe her work, but somehow not quite strong enough.

Johnie “Catfish” Mahan continued the edgy poetry (was this the theme of this session, “edginess”?) in a less political vein, & just as much fun. He read the title poem from his apparently self-published chapbook Living Posthumously, & other poems, some dealing with facing Death, such as “On the Last Sunday” (“… of my life”) & “Utter Suburbia.” Catfish’s poems were in the tradition of Beat street poetry, with poems about thoughts while having a drink (“Sunset Sabbatical”) & a poem titled “Degrees of Buddha.” But Oklahoma was what Catfish is about, with a poem (“Yellow”) on Woody Guthrie’s yellow crayon, then a pastiche of “This Land is Your Land” as a combination of Woody & Dr. Suess’ love-child.

As Groucho Marx once said, “I love my cigar, too, but sometimes I take it out of my mouth.” I love this poetry, these poets & writers, but at this point I had to take a little break before the evening feature & found a quiet place to nap, then sit quietly. Ahh.

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I returned later to the Estep Auditorium, where we enjoyed songs & pickin’ by the duo “Rowdy Folk” as we settled in for the evening’s Featured reader, Darrell Bourque. His reading was as much a history lesson on Acadie as it was  poems.  He began with poems from his collection Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie (UL Press, 2013). He read from the 3 sections of the book, including poems about contemporary Acadie in Louisiana, such as “Sunday Afternoons Behind Ti Maurice’s Dance Hall,” & “The Wash House” (his grandmother washing her hair), & poems about songs that cling to us, “Church Point Breakdown” & the touching piece about his mother singing as she was dying “Holding the Notes.” He also read some of the sonnets from a sequence about historical figures such as Evangeline & Beausoleil. Then he moved on to a newer project from the chapbook if you abandon me, comment je vas faire (Yellow Flag Press), sonnets about the life of the Creole musician Amédé Ardoin (1898 - 1942), some in persona poems.  The title poem is a sonnet composed of lines from Amédé’s songs. Acadie is not just Longfellow.

So, to again cite Uncle Wiggly, if poetry world back here in Albany doesn’t overwhelm me with readings & events, I will be back again to tell you more stories about the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival & the wonderful writers I heard.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Morning Sessions & Feature, April 3

I had to get up early enough (& have my sausage gravy & biscuits) to get to the North Lounge at ECU to hear Sally Rhoades read — what a thrill to see another Albany poet here in Oklahoma (at one point Ken Hada referred to “the Albany poets” & said he feared an invasion since there was also someone from Albany at ECU interviewing for a job). Sally began with a poem written yesterday (“Lilacs in Blossom,” a memory of her mother) inspired by what she heard read here, then read “A Silence” that was inspired after attending last year’s Scissortail Festival — poetry breeds poetry. Among the other poems she read were the self-affirming “I Want to be Swathed in Beauty” & “Searching for Sally” in which she talks about her “work” dealing with a harsh childhood filled with abuse — powerful stuff.

Clarence Wolfshohl was more in the professorial vein, tending to long introductions to short poems. After a brief poem on pyrotechnics at a Country Music show, he read “Due Cultivation,” from correspondence with Larry Thomas, a descriptive piece about his property in the part of Missouri called “little Dixie.” Other pieces were a poem about a cantankerous Missouri sign-painter, another about a ghost town & a poem for students a the Missouri School for Deaf where he had read.

Maureen Durant introduced herself as “3rd generation Oklahoma,” & her poems came across exactly like that, loaded with funny, down-home images, that seemed as natural as the red dirt. “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” was about how to spot the liars around us, “Family Ties” about a visiting her aunts that sparked family memories, & “Chemistry Lesson” was about growing up an “Army brat.” She even read 2 sonnets, one about the original Siamese Twins museum (“Mayberry USA”), & ended with “Matter in Motion” about watching a road-runner catch & kill a mouse. Real Oklahoma stuff.

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I had missed the deadline to submit poems to be a reader, but Ken Hada emailed me that there had been a cancellation & asked me to fill in — which of course I was most pleased to do. So back to the Estep Auditorium to the 2nd morning session, where I had the great thrill to be on the program with Paul Austin & Ron Wallace.

Joshua Grasso from the ECU English Department introduced the readers.

Paul Austin read poems both political & personal, beginning with a piece titled “Jackson Pollack on V.J. Day.” His untitled poem about Joy Harjo reading in Israel was about artists & the use of cultural exchanges to bring peace. He also read 3 pieces, like acts in a short play, about a boy visiting his mother, & the drama the meeting, & the memory of their lives, inspired, apparently from a longer series he is working on. He ended with a another political commentary, this titled “For Those who Govern.” Paul is not only a poet & a playwright, but an actor in the world of New York City theater & his reading was done in the best under-stated professional style.

I used my time reading to promote my chapbooks, first reading poems from Poeming the Prompt (A.P.D., 2011), “Poeming,” “Looking for Cougars,” “What Really Happened,” & “The Lesson.” Then one poem from my newest chapbook, Coyote: poems of Suburban Living. Then the 2 recent poems, “McDonalds with Love” complete with a bag from McDonalds new “Lovin’ it” campaign, & the poem from an afternoon at the bar with Sally & Ken, “Didn’t We Do this in Saratoga?”  (The photo of me reading was taken by Sally Rhoades.)

The final reader in this session, Ron Wallace,  is another of the stars in my list of Oklahoma poets. We share a love of baseball (Ron is a Yankees fan!), words & radical politics. He read from his latest collection of poems Of Hawks & Horses (and the World in Between), with a marvelous self-deprecating story about the title & cover design. & speaking of Yankees, he read his poem “Hank Bower in Winter,” a monologue by the now-gone right fielder, & “The Death of a Left Fielder.” One of the best poems of the Festival was his “Revelation” for his son Matthew (who, if he had been in the audience, would not have let his father read it). Other poems were “Fly Fishing on the Blue River,” “Old Roads,” & “On Jackson Square” (a confrontation with a homeless guy in New Orleans — Ron’s advice: “don’t wear cowboy boots in New Orleans”).

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The morning was capped off by a Featured Reading by Steven Schroeder, poet, book-artist, translator, philosopher, who has become somewhat of a fixture, certainly a welcomed one, here at Scissortail. He set the stage for his reading by quoting Paul Klee about drawing as “taking a line for a walk,” in this case the “line” refers to lines of poetry. I liked the mix of City poems (Chicago) such as “#55 Garfield Sunday” (characters on a bus), “Never Tell a Theologian Not to Dig,” & “The Truth is Out There” where he often was literally taking his lines for a walk in the city. He also included some poems for an art exhibit opening this weekend in Canyon, Texas, some poems from a new collection he is working on (yes, Steven, it should be published), & some of his translations from The Daodejing: a New Interpretation (Lamar University Press), that he has done with David Breeden & Wally Swist. The reading was neatly tied together at the end with 2 poems for different holidays from different cultures for this season: “Clara Texas, Ching Ming 2012” (Ching Ming is the Chinese tomb-sweeping day) & “Good Friday.”

(A brief public note of Thanks! to Phil Morgan & Katie for inviting me & a number of other writers to their house a few blocks from ECU for a delicious lunch that included some golden light cornbread & a luscious, rich cole slaw with a nice bite of hot peppers. Poetry & food bringing people together.)

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Afternoon Sessions & Evening Feature, April 2

After an impromptu lunch gathering of about 17 writers & artists, most of whom were reading sometime during the Festival we got back for the first of the afternoon sessions in Estep Auditorium. If there is a “discouraging word” (as the old cowboy song would have it) about the Scissortail Festival it is that there are frequently concurrent readings, so one inevitably will miss some writers. While I’ve certainly experienced this dilemma of having 2 writers I’ve wanted to hear reading at the same time, as my mother once said to a teen-age me with 2 girl friends, “sometimes you just got to make up your mind.” The other side to this issue is that this Festival has 50 some writers reading in the space of 2 & half days & there is plenty of time to get together between sessions, or after, to meet & talk.

That said, by the time I got back to the session I’d picked, Rilla Askew was already into her reading. I missed the introduction but later found her piece “The Tornado that Hit Boggy” in TriQuarterly.  It is a compelling memoir/essay about Thursday, April 12, 1945, the day that President Roosevelt died, weaving what happened in her home town in Oklahoma when the tornado hit to what was happening in the Pacific theater & in Europe as World War II was ending, & on to May 2013 & the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma. Rilla’s latest novel is Kind of Kin (Ecco). She also has a New York connection, living part of the year in the Catskills, with her husband, New York playwright & poet Paul Austin (more on Paul in a later Blog).

Mark Allen Jenkins mostly read poems about working, but his first poem fell more into the eco-poetry category, about strip mining & the changes to landscapes, the way poems can change a “landscape.” His working poems included “Playground Supervisor,” “Removing Hurricane Debris” (on a relationship), “Disposal” (throwing away plants at a garden center), & “Van Gogh in the Fertilizer & Pesticide Aisle."  He also read a the descriptive poem about Zanesville, Ohio, thinking about why he moved there.

I must confess that Alan Berecka is one of my favorite poets. After I met him here in 2011, I scheduled him to read at Poets in the Park in Albany, when he passed through to a family wedding (he grew up outside Utica). Today he began with “Invested” a poem about being at a Church meeting & thinking about the gone poet Jim Spurr, imagining him dressed like Henry VIII, with a beer in one hand & St. Peter’s keys in the other, then read “Questions of Economy - King Kong (Early Porn Star) Meets Adam Smith” which was a favorite of Jim’s because of its irreverence, from Alan’s 2011 collection Remembering the Body (Mongrel Empire Press). Alan likes to mix theology &/or religious figures & images, as in “Why Theology & Economy Don’t Mix” where he uses a childhood experience of pilfering at restaurants to explain Jesus’ appearance at Emmaus, or when he interprets Jesus as a one-hit wonder in “Jerusalem Idol.” & there is lots of family as well, “Cirrhosis Comes Home” (his mother), “Dinner Out at the Buffalo with Mom & Dad” & the funny & touching “A Father’s Confession.” Alan was struggling with a cold &/or bronchitis which maybe enhanced his reading, lowering his voice a third.

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I stayed at Estep for the 2nd afternoon reading. Gary Worth Moody read from his new book Occoquan (Red Mountain Press, 2014) a series of historical poems about the Occoquan Workhouse (also known as Lorton Reformatory) in Laurel Hill, Virginia. He began with some poems about a couple there, Agnes & Abram, then a graphic piece about the forced feeding of suffragette Lucy Burns in 1917. Then on to a couple poems from his latest book Hazards of Grace, also from Red Mountain Press, about coal mining & the inevitable disasters.

A.J. Tierney is on the Editorial Board of Nimrod: International Journal of Prose & Poetry, out of the University of Tulsa. She read from her novel-in-progress, “The Cell.” She explained that it was inspired by her correspondence with a woman friend in prison. In the excerpt she read the narrator was going through a box of letters & mementos from her mother, finds letters to a friend in prison about their friendship & breakup in high school, about giving up a baby. A rich weave of stories with a touch of mystery in the shadows. I hope by the next time I come to Scissortail The Cell will be on the book table for sale.

Alan Gann is a co-editor of the Red River Review & described himself as a “teaching artist.” Most of his poems had some connection to school, such as his opening free-style performance on words & rapping students. “Detention Ball” as about a Coach Johnson holding detention & making the students learn to waltz. He said his poem “The 4th Day of the 4th Grade” was about what the articles on classroom management don’t tell you, & the poem “Second Base” was drawn from words overheard at an 8th grade sex-education class. His poems were funny without being jokes, which he read in a relaxed style barefoot.

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One of the (many) highlights of the Scissortail Festival are the Featured Readers, whose visages adorn the flyer each year. Unlike the other reading sessions which have 3 or 4 readers sharing their work, the Featured Readers who have the stage all to themselves.

Mary Kay Zuravleff was the Featured Reader on Thursday evening, &, as he has in the past, classical guitarist Jonathan Isaacs entertained us as the crowd gathered. I had seen Mary Kay read here 2 years ago from her second novel The Bowl is Broken (Macmillan, 2006). Today she read chapter 13 from her latest novel Man Alive! (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). Described as “a family novel for smart people” by the Washington Post the story follows a pediatric psychiatrist who survives a lightning strike that changes how he looks at life, becoming obsessed with barbecuing. The novel explores how we deal - or not - with change within a family. Prose readings can, because of their length, become deadly but Mary Kay’s story & her way of reading kept me awake, even after dinner. & her breezy, smiling manner during the equally deadly Q&A actually had me enjoying the conversation.

A tradition here is that each of the Featured Readers is presented with a sandstone plate bearing the image of a Scissortail. In addition to the presentation to Mary Kay Zuravleff, Ken Hada also presented a Scissortail plate to the retiring Provost of ECU, Dr. Fisher, for his long-time support of the Festival.

From there we walked over to Vintage 22 for drinks & hors d’oeuvres, as well a some music, & a chance to talk with the writers we had been listening to throughout the day.

So, as Uncle Wiggly used to say, “If hail-storms & tornados don’t come through & spill my morning sausage gravy & biscuits, we’ll be back tomorrow when the big-hand is on the 12 & the little hand on the 3 for more readings at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.”

Metroland’s Reader’s Poll Best Local Poet 2015

I was out of town when the results of Metroland’s Reader Poll was announced & the tokens given out*.  Congratulations to Brian Dorn, Mary Panza, Jay Renzi & Elizabeth Gordon, all poets who read out regularly in the local poetry scene.

Usually this category attracts only a small number of votes (one only needs 3 votes to win 1st place, 2 votes for 2nd & 1 vote for 3rd), but there must have been a huge turnout this year. Mary Panza comes from big Italian family & knows everyone in South Troy, as well as has having many customers/clients who conceivably would vote for her (& I note that she also ended up in the category “Best Local Celebrity You’d Like to Date”). In order to beat her votes Brian Dorn must’ve gotten everyone in Saratoga County to vote for him, & maybe he has big family too. In addition I know personally that a number of votes were cast for poets RM Engelhardt & for Gary Murrow, both of whom have been on the “Best Local Poet” list in past years (I mean if you can’t figure out how to stuff the ballot box you haven’t lived in Albany long enough yet). How many other local poets just didn’t make the cut? We’ll never know.

Metroland states that “more than 3,500 readers returned our print and online surveys” so I guess you can say that after all these years Metroland is finally catching on.

Congratulations to all the winners in all the categories, from Best Pizza, to Best Punk Band, to Best Poet. Keep at it. I hear that next year Metroland is doubling the prizes.


* As my father said about awards, “That & a token will get you on the bus.”

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Morning Sessions, Part 2, April 2

We returned to the Estep Auditorium for 3 more writers, & an unexpected birth, so to speak. The readers were introduced by Mark Walling, Chair of the English Department at ECU.

karla k. morton is the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate & this was her first time at Scissortail. I learned later at lunch that in Texas a Poet Laureate is identified by the year they are appointed, but then serve for life; it is an unfunded position but the 2 from Texas I have met (the other is Larry Thomas, more on him in subsequent posts) are energetic, active, hard-working promoters of poetry & poets. karla read from her 2014 collection Constant State of Leaping (Texas Review Press), but has at least 6 other books of poetry out there. Reading her poems later I was glad I bought the book to bathe in the deep waters of the poems, such as “Adytum” (a sacred place). She also read poems of parenting such as “Teenage Burning” & a poem about her father & brother playing catch “Passing the Gauntlet” that brought tears to my eyes, remembering playing catch with my father & later with my sons & daughters. Early in her reading she introduced us to “Margo,” a chrysalis she was tending, done up in a colorful basket, protectively wrapped in gold tulle.

George McCormick was another writer I had seen & heard read here at earlier festivals. Today he read from a forthcoming novel, Inland Empire. The narrator in the story was a photographer who has moved to Oklahoma & while doing research about the State discovers annotations in a book on, of all things, grain elevators that starts a chain of research, thoughts — about learning to see.

R. (Raquel) Flowers Rivera was here for the first time & read from her 2nd collection Heathen (Lotus Press, 2015), which was the winner of the 2015 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award (selected by E. Ethelbert Miller). The poems she read were a re-mix of classical myths on contemporary situations, such as “Lady Tiresias, Seven-Years a Woman,” “Sisyphus” (on raising children), “The Achilles Poem” on the nature of relationships, &, among others, my favorite “Hera Has Her Say” in which the wife of Zeus is talks in bitter commentary on her life in a small Southern town. These were not a re-telling of the stories, but using the characters as modern day figures, inventive & moving.

Then, just as the reading ended, karla announce that the chrysalis had burst forth into a butterfly — obviously warmed & stimulated by the words filling this grand auditorium. Margo was then taken outside & released in a sheltered & quiet place. Who was it who said (or “says” all the time) “poetry doesn’t do anything”? Well, perhaps it just birthed a butterfly — you know the ancient Greeks saw the butterfly as the image of the soul.

It was an over-whelming start to the Festival. More to come.

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival - Morning Sessions, Part 1, April 2

Back after 2 years, I was glad to see old friends & in the course of the 3 days make new ones. I had been to this Festival twice before; you can find my pictures from 2011 here, & my pictures from 2013 here, as well as the Blogs by exploring the chronological listings to the left.  It is held at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma each year, organized by Ken Hada who brings together regional poets & prose writers from across Oklahoma, Texas, & neighboring states, as well as errant poets from elsewhere, such as Sally Rhoades & me. I first met Ken in 2010 at the Oklahoma Labor Fest when the 3 Guys from Albany made a poetry pilgrimage to Albany, Oklahoma (south along the Red River). Ken told me about the Scissortail Festival & when I went the following year, I was hooked. This is no AWP — it is just writers reading to each other, selling our books to each other (facilitated by the great volunteer staff of students & professors), about as non-hierarchical & as egalitarian as it gets, with writers with contracts with major publishers at readings with self-published street poets, Poet Laureates (past & present) from at least 3 states listening to work-in-progress novelists & the unpublished. This year fellow Albany-poet Sally Rhoades had gotten on the program so we arranged to fly down together & share the cost of a rental car.

There were 2 sessions on the morning of Thursday, April 2, both in the Estep Auditorium at ECU, with the genial Ken Hada welcoming us & introducing the readers.

First up was poet Hank Jones, who began appropriately enough with a tribute “The Great Jim Spurr is Dead.” I had met Jim Spurr when I first came to Oklahoma in 2010, & he read at the other Scissortail Festivals I attended. Jim was a warm, funny, genuine poet who ran an open mic in Shawnee, OK (it was on the third Thursday so we joked that neither of us could get to the other’s open mic); he died suddenly in August 2014 at the age of 79. Hank’s second poem, “What I Learned in Boy Scouts,” was also dedicated to Jim because he so loved irreverence (the poem was about young boys & their genitals). Hank's other poems were about work cutting up a tree, writing, as well as making peace with a mosquito, as well as a marvelous meditative piece about walking his dog & jogging to a an old church at the end of the road.

Towards the end of the Festival I was lucky enough to get a copy of Jim Spurr's last book, Live Loud, Live Long, published soon after his death by Dorothy Alexander's press, Village Books Press of Cheyenne, OK.

Jessica Isaacs, who teaches at Seminole State College, has also read here before. About half her poems were from her collection Deep August (Village Books Press, Cheyenne, OK, 2014). I was impressed by a trio of eco-poems in the middle of her reading, including the political, environmental rant against the machine “Tender of Flesh” & 2 poems on slaughtering animals “Bovine” & “Pelts.” “Coyote” was a tender poem about a soldier visiting the grave of one of his buddies.

Ben Myers is the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma. I had bought his 2013 collection Lapse Americana (NYQ Books) when I was here last & still take it down from my shelf on occasion. His poems are descriptive, often narrative, such as “Grown Ass Man” & “My Grandfather’s Fake Rolex.” He said that as Poet Laureate he often has to write about disasters & read a couple, “After the Grass Fires” & “After the Ice Storm.” There were poems about guys he grew up with, such as “Reunion with Dumb Ass” & poems on small-town life, such as “One Horse Oklahoma Celebrates the 4th of July.”

This first morning session only wetted my appetite for more readings, but we all needed a brief break to catch our breaths & prepare ourselves for more good writing.  & this is only the first Blog of a series on the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival.