Join us for Tea with Alaska Reads Author Lily Tuzroyluke

Tuesday, October 7

Multipurpose Room Wasilla Public Library

5:15 Doors open

5:30-6:30 Presentation

6:30-7:00 meet the author

Lily will read from her book Sivulliq: Ancestor and share with us the inspiration behind her debut novel and some writing tips.

Fireside Books will have copies of Sivulliq for purchase at the event.

Lily H. Tuzroyluke is an Indigenous author, formerly employed in Tribal Government, and living a sober lifestyle for over 23 years. She is an enrolled Tribal member of the Native Village of Point Hope and Nisga’a Nation, her homelands stretching from arctic Alaska to the coastal rainforests of British Columbia.

In January 2023, she published her debut novel Sivulliq: Ancestor – a fiction story about an Inupiaq family in arctic Alaska during the 1890s. Sivulliq: Ancestor tells the story of Kayaliruk, an Inupiaq mother with three children. They’ve survived a smallpox epidemic, now living in destitute and apocalyptic lands. In this story, Kayaliruk must journey hundreds of miles across the arctic. It is a story of a mother’s love, determination, and traditional knowledge of the lands.

Lily writes for her Indigenous Peoples. She honors Indigenous storytelling traditions – in both form and content – while confronting the injustices Indigenous Peoples have suffered at the hands of colonizers.

Her current work-in-progress is a fiction novel based in the 1940’s, in an Indigenous Residential School. She stays true to her style of writing, describing the child sexual abuse by priests and nuns, and the genocidal acts intertwined with assimilation attempts.

This event is made possible through the following partners: The Alaska Center for the Book, the Friends of Wasilla Public Library, 49 Writers, the Mat-Su Health Foundation, Fireside Books, and the Wasilla Public Library.