Oklahoma Authors to present at 4th annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival

The fourth annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival will be April 2 – 4 [2009] at the Estep Multimedia Center, located on the campus of East Central
University. This event is free and open to the public. In addition to the three featured authors, Rilla Askew, Elmer Kelton and LeAnne Howe, the festival will showcase an additional fifty regional authors.

Askew graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1980 and went on to study creative writing at Brooklyn
College, where she received her master of fine arts degree in 1989.  Askew’s first novel, The Mercy Seat, received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Her novel, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers
Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. Askew’s latest novel, Harpsong, won the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award and Western Heritage Award for Best Novel.

Elmer Kelton is the author of over 40 novels. Four of Kelton’s novels have won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and seven have won the Spur award from Western Writers of America. In 1998 he received the first Lone Star award for lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at
Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, Texas. He also received honorary doctorates from Hardin-Simmons University and Texas Tech University. He was given a lifetime achievement award by the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock, Texas. His book, The Good Old Boys, was made into a 1995 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones for the TNT cable network. 

LeAnne Howe is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and is an American Indian author, playwright, and scholar. Her work primarily deals with American Indian experiences. She attended Oklahoma State University, majoring in English. She obtained her master of fine arts degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College in 2000.  Howe’s first novel, Shell Shaker received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002, Creative Prose.  Evidence of Red received the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry in 2006. 

 The Darryl Fisher High School Creative Writing Contest winners will also be awarded during the festival. For more information contact Dr. Ken Hada at 580-559-5557.  To view the schedule of readers, visit http://www.ecok.edu/scissortail/Creative_Writing_Festival.asp