The fiction and prose selections included in Charleswood Road contrast stark reality with fantasy, mortality with transcendence and explore both the mundane and pivotal choices people make in shaping their world.

Each selection, neither predictable nor conventional, challenges one's assumptions of what is real and what is possible and inspires one to question the role of fate and fortune in one's own life.

From first kisses to last breaths and everything in between, sentiment is stripped away to reveal both the allure and acrimony of humanity. Rich and varied, bleak and hopeful, this remarkable collection of short stories and poetry pulls focus on our limitations and in spite of these limitations, our willingness to see each day to the end.

The title offering is a wholly original and candid coming of age piece loosely based around real events in the city of Winnipeg.

M. C. Joudrey is a Canadian writer, award winning artist and designer. His second novel Of Violence and Cliché was released September 2013, followed by his collection of short stories Charleswood Road: Stories in August 2014, which was nominated for a 2015 Manitoba Book Award. His novel Fanonymous was released in 2019 and was nominated for two Manitoba Book Awards, including the Margaret Laurence Award for best work of fiction. M.C. Joudrey has been a member of the submission selection committee for the CBC Short Fiction Prize and a jury member for the Manitoba Book Awards. His titles reside in permanent legislative and national government collections. He is also a bookbinder and a number of his works are held in galleries internationally.

M.C. Joudrey's profile page

"Charleswood Road bursts from the containment of genre without over-endorsing its own experimentality by being impenetrable and shows skillful story-telling ability. A pleasant literary equilibrium ideal to awaken the world when you need a subtle escape." Jury (Aimée Craft, Kristian Enright and Ron Robinson), Manitoba Book Awards “A bildungsroman in miniature, Charleswood Road is set during a teenaged skater's last summer in Winnipeg and is worth checking out." —Joel Robert Ferguson, contributor, Broken Pencil Magazine