The Writers' Collective

Yellow Dog Reading change of date: Louise B. Halfe and Beatrice Mosionier

will now be reading Monday February 28, 7:30 PM, Yellow Dog Tavern (386 Donald next to the Carnegie Deli)

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild continues its third season of readings at the Yellow Dog Tavern featuring writers from Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Newfoundland in 2010-2011. Individual admission is $10.00 at the door, reservations recommended. Reservations can now be made at   or by calling 204-944-8013. The series features 20 minute readings by two authors, followed by a conversation illuminating the lives and work of the featured writers.  For a full list of readings visit:http://www.mbwriter.mb.ca/.

Beatrice Mosionier (formerly Beatrice Culleton) was born in 1949, in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Canada. She attended George Brown College (1970) in Toronto, and Banff School of Fine Arts (1983). She was raised in foster homes, as were her brother and two sisters, because of her parents’ alcoholism. Following the death of two sisters to suicide, Beatrice decided to write In Search of April Raintree. First published in 1983, it has become a Canadian classic. Beatrice is the author of several children’s book including: Spirit of the White Bison, Christopher’s Folly, and Unusual Friendships: A Little Black Cat and a Little White Rat. Her second novel, In the Shadow of Evil, was published in 2000. Her most recent book is the memoir Come Walk With Me, published by Portage and Main Press in 2009.

Louise Halfe, Sky Dancer, was born in Two Hills, Alberta. She was raised on the Saddle Lake First Nation and attended Blue Quills Residential School. Halfe made her debut as a poet in Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada, the acclaimed anthology of life-writings by Native women. Halfe’s first book of poetry, Bear Bones and Feathers, won the Milton Acorn Award for 1996 and was short-listed for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award. Blue Marrow, published by McClelland and Steward in 1998, is a mixture of prose and poetry resurrecting voices from the past. Blue Marrow was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award. Louise’s third book of poetry, The Crooked Good, published in 2007 by Coteau, won the Saskatoon Book Award and the Saskatoon Publishers Award and was short listed for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.The Crooked Good is an epic poem based on the Cree Legend of the Rolling Head, interwoven with the lives of four generations of women. Louise served as the first aboriginal Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan from 2005-2006. Her work is widely published in anthologies and magazines.