Terese Marie Mailhot's memoir Heart Berries is on the Canada Reads 2019 longlist. The final five books and the panellists defending them will be revealed on Jan. 31, 2019.

The 2019 debates are happening March 25-28, 2019 and will be hosted by Ali Hassan.

Born and raised on Seabird Island, B.C., Terese Marie Mailhot​ is in the creative writing faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she graduated with an MFA in fiction. Her memoir, Heart Berries, chronicles her struggle to balance the beauty of her Indigenous heritage with the often desperate and chaotic reality of life on the reservation.

Heart Berries was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

"I had to make an assertion in the beginning of the book declaring how I wanted it to be read. It was really important to tell people that every time I had tried to impart the truth of my life, people either used it against me or judged me for my circumstance. It was important to make the declaration that my story had been maltreated and the words were too ugly to speak, but I've learned to speak them.

"Dealing with reality is better than pushing it down. I enjoy illustrating my pain because the more I'm able to articulate the damage that's been done, I can heal — I can look at something and think about it objectively and engage with it in a meaningful way. Understanding that as much as I can makes me a better mother."