The Finnish American Folk Festival of Naselle is pleased to welcome . . .

Maija Huiras

Maija’s presentation centers around her autobiography, Maija’s Sisu. Her book takes the reader from 1929 through 1997.

She writes about her early childhood in Finland’s Karjala and about her mother who survived the 1917 Russian Communist revolution. She includes the war years 1939-1944, when as a homeless refugee, she witnessed the Finnish people’s struggles on the home front.

At the age of twenty, Maija arrived in New York armed only with sisu and her mother’s fortitude.

Today Maija lives in West Linn, Oregon, currently writing her fourth book about her life.