Métis writer Beatrice Mosionier (formerly Beatrice Culleton) made a big splash with with her groundbreaking, acclaimed first book, In Search of April Raintree. Now, more than 20 years later, she's just published a memoir - a moving, even inspirational, book called Come Walk With Me (High Water Press).

As what happened with far too many Canadians, government bureaucrats broke up her family and Mosionier was raised by white foster parents. In the memoir, she conveys her confusion during childhood visits with her family, when no one told her her family had been split apart.

Mosionier also writes openly about her parents' alcoholism, the tragic, premature loss of her sisters to suicide and her long-dysfunctional relationship with her first husband.

Still, with help from friends, family and some helpful social workers, as well as her strong spiritual sense, Mosionier rebuilt her life. She reveals her growing awareness of institutional racism, why she felt compelled to write her most famous work and how she reconnected with her First Nations heritage.

In direct, unadorned prose, Mosionier tells her story of cultural tragedy and personal triumph.

Mosionier reads from Come Walk With Me at Aqua Books on Friday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. with David Robertson.

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Wayne Tefs is known for his prize-winning novels Be Wolf and 4x4, but he's just published his first collection of stories, Meteor Storm (Turnstone Press).

There's no indication when the stories were first written, but one of them, Red Rock and After, was included in The Journey Prize Anthology in 1990 and received the Canadian Magazine Fiction Prize that year.

Many of the stories take place in a fictional Northern Ontario community called Red Rock (Tefs grew up in the area but now lives in Winnipeg) and concern men, mostly young men, who aren't as tough as the world around them.

It's interesting to see this theme explored throughout his work - in his novels, of course, and now in these stories. Tefs writes about knowing that better days lie ahead but how little consolation that can bring when "the world is a grey and lonely place."

These are stories about what he calls "minor tragedies, sad but not heartbreaking." As he notes about one character, "He'd started out with one idea bout his life in mind but had to settle for something else entirely."

Wayne Tefs reads from Meteor Storm at Aqua Books on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. (that's tonight) with David Annandale.