Northern hosts Literary Festival Oct. 12-13

TONKAWA — Northern Oklahoma College is hosting the 2018 Chikaskia Literary Festival Oct. 12-13 at the Eleanor Hays Art Gallery at the Kinzer Performing Arts Center, NOC Tonkawa.

Festival times are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12,  and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13.

An artists’ reception is set for 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12.

Headline authors include Sly Alley, Paul Austin, and Rilla Askew.

Sly Alley is a writer of poetry and short fiction. His debut collection of poetry won the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Alley is a Native American writer, of Otoe-Missouria, Iowa, and Potawatomi descent. He grew up in the Tecumseh area and studied at Seminole State College.

Paul Austin has acted and directed on and Off Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, summer stock, and regional theatres around the nation, as well as acting for television and film. Late Night Conspiracies, a collection of his writings, was performed with a jazz ensemble at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre, where he is a long-time member. He has written for and about the theatre in essays, poetry and plays. His work has appeared in such publications as This Land, Sugar Mule, Oklahoma Review and Newport Review. His collection, Notes for Hard Times will be published in fall 2018 by Village Press. He’s currently working on three other collections Actors, Mother and Son and Persons of Influence.

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the American Book Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, WILLA Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas, among others. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award and Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Her novel about Oklahoma’s draconian immigration laws, Kind of Kin, was longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Prize and was a finalist for the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America in 2008. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Longreads, Transatlantica, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. She received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Other guest writers include Ken Hada, Ann Howell, Rob Roensch, Christopher Soden, Robert Dean and Roy Beckenmeyer.  NOC students will also be reading.

Poet and visual artist Steven Schroeder will also be hosting an exhibit simultaneously in the gallery in the KPAC.

For additional information, contact Dr. Don Stinson at [email protected] or Dr. Brandon Hobson at [email protected] .

The event is sponsored by the Otoe-Missouria Development Authority, Art Works, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Oklahoma Arts Council.