Jason Poudrier Writes About His Experiences at Scissortail Writing Festival

The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival is the most happening writing get together in all of Oklahoma. It takes place at East Central University in small town Ada, Oklahoma. The town fills and the restaurants are packed as writers from all over the United Sates arrive to participate or observe, or often both, the Scissortail Festival. At this year's festival, writer's came from as far away as Alaska and South Dakota to participate. There were several -yes several- former poet laureates from different states, including Oklahoma and Texas. And Jim Barnes, the current Oklahoma poet laureate, read from his new book and mingled with other writers and literature lovers during the afterhours events that take place throughout Ada each night of the festival.

Books are sold and can often be signed virtually simultaneously; a long table holds all the books for sale by various authors reading at the festival. Rilla Askew, last year--I had read last year from a manuscript I am working on--signed my copy of Harpsong "to a fellow writer," which I thought was awesome.


This year I got a chance to chat with Nathan Brown an Oklahoma Book Award recipient, who also has several poetry books out; we talked about writing and an author who read at the festival last year, named Jim Chastain. I enjoyed Chastain's reading and purchased his book right after. The title of the book: "I survived Cancer but Never Won the Tour de France."

The heart breaking part of the festival this year, for me, was finding out from Chastain's friend Nathan Brown that Chastain passed away last year. However, Brown and another of Chastain's writing friends are working on completing Chastain's final manuscript for him, and they are hoping to publish it within a few years.

As a reader, I enjoyed the opportunity and was honored to read among such great artists in 2008 and 2009; this year as a spectator, I enjoyed the freedom of attending which ever session I chose (more than one reading occurs at a time in different locations) and listening to fabulous writers share their works and talk about writing.

(Note: The photos come from Scissortail 2010's facebook page, this photo album for the 2009 festival, and Amazon.com. They were added by Teri McGrath.)