Eva Lucia Saulitis

Born on May 10, 1963 in the Bronx, NY to John P. and Asja Ivins Saulitis, she spent most of her childhood in Silver Creek, NY, where she attended Silver Creek Central School and graduated in 1981. She attended Northwestern University for one year, but completed her B.S. in Environmental Studies from Syracuse University's School of Environmental Science and Forestry in 1985. Following her dream to live in the wilderness, she moved to Alaska in 1986 and spent the rest of her life there with her life partner, Craig Matkin. She received an M.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1993 and completed her second master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1999.

Eva's writing touched countless lives with her powerfully honest and generous sharing of her journey with breast cancer, through her Caring Bridge site and in her published works, including her non-fiction memoir Into Great Silence (Beacon Press, 2013); two poetry collections, Many Ways to Say It (Red Hen Press, 2012) and Prayer in Wind (Boreal Books/Red Hen Press, 2015); and her recently completed collection of essays, Becoming Earth (Boreal Books/Red Hen Press, release date 2017). Her first book, a collection of essays entitled Leaving Resurrection Chronicles of a Whale Scientist, was published in 2008 by Boreal Books. Her essays, poems and reviews have appeared in many journals and anthologies including Orion, The Sun, The Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Crazyhorse and The Utne Reader. She was recently profiled in the Anchorage Daily News' We Alaskans section, and just days before her death, received news of her receipt of the Homer Arts Council's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, she was recognized with an Alaska Governor's Award for the Arts and Humanities. She was also the recipient of writing awards and fellowships from the Rasmuson Foundation, the Alaska Humanities Forum, the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Island Institute.

Writing and teaching were lifelong passions, beginning with her first diary at age six and ending with her final journal entry just two days before her death. She was an associate professor in the University of Alaska Anchorage Low-Residency MFA program, and continued to mentor her graduate students even during the final weeks of her life, telling us that teaching nourished and healed her. She remembered with fondness her years spent teaching at the Kachemak Bay Campus of Kenai Peninsula College in Homer, AK, where she shared her craft with local students, friends and neighbors. Eva never turned down the opportunity to read and provide her insights into the works of other writers, from whom she felt she learned just as much as she taught. And her stepchildren, nieces and nephews benefited greatly from her honest and loving critiques of college essays, medical school applications and high school assignments. She had the powerful ability to connect each student with his or her own innate writer's voice. The annual Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference in Homer, of which she was a founder, lives on as a part of her prolific legacy.

While her home address was in Homer, she always felt that her true home was found in Prince William Sound, where for the past 27 years, together with her life partner Craig Matkin, she studied killer whales. Eva brought her keen gift of observation, her profound love and respect for all living creatures, her adventurous spirit and her spiritual connection to the earth with her wherever she traveled, worked or lived. When not spending long hours looking through binoculars in the quest to "find the whales" in the waters of Prince William Sound, she could be found hiking its islands, picking buckets of wild blueberries and salmonberries while calling out to hidden bears, hunkering down in Squire Cove to ride out weather in the cabin of their boat which she had turned into a cozy home complete with homemade curtains, preparing "Hot Dish" - a mixture of egg noodles, fresh-caught fish, cream of mushroom soup and lots of cheese - a meal somehow only delicious when prepared in the field, cooking fresh-caught fish over an open fire, or sharing stories, music, tears and laughter with friends. Her final resting place will be in her true home.

But Eva was so much more than a scientist, whale researcher, poet, essayist and writer. To her family and friends, she was our heart and soul. Raised by first generation Latvian immigrant parents, Eva carried a deep awareness of the powerful influence of one's cultural and family history on personal identity. Eva strove to foster the positive aspects of her upbringing in her own life including her love of raising and preserving her own food from her prolific garden, learning and passing on the traditional crafts of making Latvian Easter eggs and baking Latvian bread, and fierce loyalty to one's family whether biological or adopted. We all benefited from Eva's ability to make just about any situation fun, or at least funny. With her sharp wit, her penchant for giving personal names to inanimate objects, for finding peculiar but always perfectly fitting nicknames for just about everybody, through her own various nutty personas and by being the best-ever Auntie Eva and stepmom through all kinds of crazy adventures and creations, everything was more fun when she was around.

Eva is survived by her true love and life partner, Craig Matkin; and the lights of her life - her stepchildren, Eve (Eivin) Kilcher, Elli Matkin (Peter) and Lars Matkin (Alisa); and grandchildren, Findlay and Sparrow Kilcher. She will be missed forever by her sister and best friend, Mara Liebling (Jon) of Bainbridge Island, WA; and brothers, Andy Saulitis (Kathy) of Darien, CT and John Saulitis (Susie) of Mineral Ridge, OH; as well as by her cherished nieces and nephews, John, Peter and Kathryn Saulitis, Emily and Anna Saulitis, Phoebe, Sam and Quinn Liebling and Shanti and Jason Matkin. Together in grief are many relatives throughout the United States, Canada and Latvia, especially brothers-in-law, Roger Matkin and his wife Mi-Sook, Kirk Matkin and his wife, Sandra, all of Southern California; and her "other brother," Jon Liebling of Bainbridge Island, WA; as well as countless friends, neighbors, colleagues and followers of her writing. Her loyal companion and guardian, Gris-Gris, remains behind. Eva was predeceased in the last year by her mother, Asja Ivins Saulitis; and previously by her father, Janis Saulitis; beloved Tante Vala; and cousin John Niedra. As her spirit soared, she was greeted in the eternal wilderness by her Hawaiian dogs Kea and Boo as well as by sixteen Chugach transient killer whales from the AT-1 pod of Prince William Sound.

In words that could only flow from Eva's heart to her pen, she left us with this message: "There is nothing more I needed in this life, except more of what was already given to me. It was a good day to die, because it was such a good life to have lived."

A celebration of Eva's honorable life will be held in Homer when spring comes.

In lieu of flowers and to honor Eva and her legacy of writing and teaching, donations are welcomed to the Eva Saulitis Endowment Scholarship Fund through the University of Alaska Anchorage University Advancement: greenandgold.uaa.alaska.edu/give. Under "Where do you want to give, choose "other" and type in Eva Saulitis Endowment Scholarship Fund.

Obituary from the Observer