From Judy MacDonald--author of the novel Jane--is a startling collection of stories called Grey.
Grey is a baby. Grey is a bad date. Grey battles a tornado, flies past giant monkeys, and pauses to watch an old woman with her lists.
These stories toy with fact and fiction, autobiography and invention, memory and make believe. Grey proves that a misunderstood colour can be far from dull. Read about a girl falling in love with a giraffe. Learn about one young boy's favourite breastfeeding scenarios. Observe several kinds of relationships. Join the author for an afterlife visit with Stanley Kubrick.
Grey--with delicious observation, sharp dialogue, colourful characters--ages well.
Shortlisted, The Relit Award for Short Fiction.

By trade, Judy is a journalist, writer, editor, television news producer, and has been editor-in -chief of a peppy online magazine called rabble.ca. She has worked in TVland for The National on CBC, as well as for counterSpin and Face-Off on CBC Newsworld. Her work has been published in The Writing Space Journal, Kiss Machine, Geist, Canadian Forum, The Toronto Star, and Compass magazine. She spends as much of her summers as she can in a cold-water shack at Camp Naivelt ("New World"). The camp was founded by the United Jewish People's Order (UJPO), and is located just outside the ever-widening GTA belt. It is perhaps the last of its kind in Canada: it was built as a revolutionary kinderland for children of immigrants sweating away for Toronto's shmata trade.

Judy MacDonald's profile page

• Short-listed, ReLit Award

Kafka said books should "shake us awake like a blow to the skull"; that they should act as "the axe to the frozen sea within us." This is a dead-on description of my first experience of reading Judy MacDonald. This is why MacDonald's bracing, fearless fiction represents some of the most exciting work this country has yet produced.
-Lynn Coady, author of Strange Heaven and Play the Monster Blind

Lynn Coady

. . . Judy MacDonald writes stories like other people dare their friends to jump off cliffs. . . MacDonald particularly excels when channeling her younger protagonists, the twisted coloring-book logic of her vision aligning nicely with the cracked childhoods she portrays so fearlessly. The result is a collection of stories that deserve attention for their unusual pairing of provocative risk-taking with a commitment to making the risk pay off in emotionally resonant, thoughtful ways.
-NewCityChicago

NewCityChicago

I started it and finished it on the same day, which is my highest form of praise.
-The Vancouver Sun

Vancouver Sun

Reading Judy MacDonald's fiction is like watching a hummingbird attack a hollyhock: the narration swoops, dives and flits from observation to observation, hovers and hesitates and then finally lands right on target with a devastating stillness and accuracy.
-eye Magazine

eye Magazine

Sparse and powerful.
-NOW

NOW

. . . there's a deep sensitivity under the whimsy. . . she's really writing about universal experiences.
-Uptown

Uptown

Each story in MacDonald's collection leaves a unique and eerie residue on their reader--a strong impression from beyond the confines of the presented language. Her spare prose, characterized by short, quick sentences, enhances narrative effect, filling the conceived boundary with an evocative, tonal feeling.
-Cosmik Debris

Cosmik Debris

MacDonald writes with delicacy, humour and sympathy.
-The Globe & Mail

The Globe & Mail