An Alaska Native language advocate, a longtime librarian, an elementary school publishing program, and a project to give free books to children in Alaska’s airports are winners of the 2017 Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) Awards.
University of Alaska Southeast assistant professor of Alaska Native Languages Lance Twitchell was chosen as one of the winners of the 2017 Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) Awards.
The CLIAs honor people and programs that have made a significant contribution in literacy, the literary arts, or the preservation of the written or spoken word. Nearly 80 individuals and agencies have been recognized over the years, ranging from authors, publishers and booksellers, to teachers and teacher aides, historians and linguists, and more.
X’unei Lance Twitchell is from the Tlingit, Haida and Yup’ik nations. He was part of a team of language advocates who worked to make Alaska Native languages the co-official languages of the state of Alaska. He is currently studying in the world’s only language revitalization doctorate program. Twitchell is also a multimedia artist in poetry, fiction and non-fiction, drama, Northwest Coast Native design, and music.
The 2017 CLIA winners will be recognized at a July 11 reception at Room 150 of the Arts Building on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. A dessert reception begins at 7:30 p.m., with the awards ceremony at 8 p.m. The awards will be followed by readings from authors Erin Coughlin Hollowell and Daryl Farmer, as part of the UAA Creative Writing and Literary Arts summer residency program. The evening events are free and open to the public.
For more information, go to www.alaskacenterforthebook.org, or contact carolben@gci.net.
