Humanizing a thought
Fort Smith student Kayla Tulugarjuk
recognized for her creative writing
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
THEBACHA/FORT SMITH
Kayla Tulugarjuk of Fort Smith expresses herself in a number of creative ways, but writing is her favourite.
Kayla Tulugarjuk: The Grade 12 student in Fort Smith has won the senior division of the NorthWords NWT's Spark! youth writing contest. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo
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"I really like expressing myself through art and through different mediums of art, but I do feel as though writing is my strongest out of everything because it's just something that comes very easily to me," said the 17-year-old student at Paul William Kaeser High School.
Now, her writing is being recognized at a territorial level.
Earlier this month, she won the senior division in the NorthWords NWT's Spark! youth writing contest, which also honoured three other students from her school.
Her short story is called The Moon is Staring Back.
Tulugarjuk said she did not want to write about teenagers being in love because she thought that was "kind of ridiculous," and she believed everybody else was going to be doing that.
"So with my story I wrote about a little girl who pretty much pushed her own feelings and beliefs onto the moon, and decided that she had fallen in love with the moon," she said. "Not necessarily romantic love, because I feel as though there are different kinds of love - like love for your parents and love for your friends. And her hopes for becoming a better, stronger person were inspired because of the moon."
Tulugarjuk wrote the story in about an hour.
"It was just something that popped into my mind," she explained. "Initially, I was planning on entering the contest and for about a week I wrote maybe like the introduction to the same story 10 to 15 different times. I just wasn't feeling it at all, and so I just decided I wasn't going to enter the contest. I was just getting writer's block and I wasn't able to be satisfied with what my outcome was. And then the day before, something kind of popped into my head and I sat in front of a computer, and here we are."
The young writer said she is surprised and very honoured to be chosen a winner in the Spark! contest.
Tulugarjuk sees the recognition as a way to help her grow.
"You find out what you're good at and why people like it and why you enjoy doing something, and just expand from there," she said.
Tulugarjuk plans on incorporating writing into her future, but is not quite sure how.
"My goal is to try to make a difference and help people in Canada, especially minorities, in getting their voices heard by everybody else," she said. "I was looking into maybe getting a journalism degree or doing something political. That's all I know so far."
There are a lot of things that she enjoys about the creative outlet of writing.
"I'm a very creative person, so I do really like the process of going through and deciding what's going to happen from this point on and character development and stuff like that, and deciding how you're going to portray a person, and just try to humanize a thought, basically," she said.
After she graduates this year from Grade 12, she plans to take a year off school.
"I love education, and I love the idea of education and bettering yourself, and just learning in general, but I've been going to school for 13 years. So I just need a little bit of a break to just live, I guess. I'm still so young," she said, noting she will be working this summer at Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre.
Tulugarjuk was born in Igloolik, Nunavut, but only lived there for a year.
"I do have a lot of creative influence from Nunavut and from my ethnic background," she noted. "My mother is very invested in keeping our culture alive and through that I feel as though I do gain some sort of knowledge and inspiration from my culture."
Her mother is Lucy Tulugarjuk, who is best known for acting in the acclaimed Inuktitut-language movie, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, which was released in 2001.
The younger Tulugarjuk has been part of a school play and is also involved in an improv program in Fort Smith.
Her other artistic expressions include drawing, painting and photography.
For almost six years, Tulugarjuk has lived in Fort Smith, which she described as a good place to be an artist.
"Everybody is very open to everybody's art, which I think is super amazing," she said. "Our community is very accepting and very encouraging for people to express themselves."
