Velma Wallis

Velma Wallis' career as a bestselling author may have been destined from the start, but it most likely would have seemed improbable - if not fantastical - to her as a young girl growing up in a remote Alaskan village. Velma Wallis' personal odyssey began in Fort Yukon, Alaska, a location accessible only by riverboat, airplane, snowmobile or dogsled. Having dropped out of school at the age of 13 in order to care for her siblings in the wake of their father's death, Wallis passed her high school equivalency test - earning her GED - and then surprised friends and relatives by choosing to move into an old trapping cabin 12 miles from Fort Yukon. For almost a dozen years, she survived on what she gathered from hunting, fishing and trapping - a daring and strikingly independent lifestlye during which she struggled to define her personal identity. In fact, it seems difficult to separate Velma Wallis from the imagery of hardship and the mere pursuit of survival itself - which is actually the underlying theme of her first and widely successful effort as a writer, Two Old Women. Inspired by an old Athabaskan legend passed on by Wallis' mother, Two Old Women follows Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak as they struggle to coexist with an unrelenting Nature as well as conquer extreme old age after being abandoned by their own tribe for fear that the two elders would cripple any chance of surviving the harsh winter. Determined to live and so disprove the tribe's belief that they lack social worth, the two women discover strength and self-confidence they never knew they possessed. In this regard, it seems possible to read Two Old Women as a kind of metaphor for Wallis' own childhood and role as a once emerging - but now accomplished - writer whose legendary tale has sold 1.5 million copies and been translated into 17 languages worldwide. It should come as remarkable, then, that Two Old Women is widely considered to be a word-of-mouth bestseller - what many have called a "publishing phenomenon" - gaining in popularity as mothers, daughters, teachers and mentors share the native wisdom of Sa' and Ch'idzigyaak amongst themselves. Composed on an antiquated typewriter, the aspiring author's retelling of the Athabaskan legend seemed infused with magic from the beginning. Even so, the question of whether Wallis' work would actually be put in print was complicated by a lack of financial resources on the part of her publisher Epicenter Press, which was still in its infancy at the time of Wallis' submission. But in spite of such a formidable challenge, a group of University of Alaska students taught by Lael Morgan - co-founder of Epicenter Press along with Kent Sturgis - started a grass roots effort intended to raise enough money to publish the manuscript. Since that time, Wallis has written two additional books - Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun and also Raising Ourselves. The now middle-aged author currently divides her time between Fort Yukon and Fairbanks along with her three daughters. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including both the 1993 Western States Book Award and the 1994 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Two Old Women as well as the 2003 Before Columbus Foundation Award for Raising Ourselves.