Michael Patrick MacDonald(2016)

WRITER

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times bestselling coming-of-age memoir: All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. Both memoirs deal with the issues he experienced growing up in South Boston’s Old Colony Housing Project. Having lost four siblings to poverty, violence, and the drug trade, MacDonald uses personal story to promote conversation about trauma in the lives of young people, and about the possibility for individual and community healing.

MacDonald is currently teaching a community-based transformative storytelling curriculum at The Peace Institute in Boston, a survivor-led organization working to support homicide survivors and reduce trauma and cycles of violence.

MacDonald is Author in Residence at Northeastern University’s Honors Department and has served as Distinguished Writer in Residence at UMass Boston and the McCormack Institute for Research and Global Policy, where he developed a curriculum called ‘Dealing With the Past: Local and Global Perspectives on Truth-telling, Social Justice, and Healing.’ MacDonald serves on boards and advisory committees including Crittenton Women’s Union, Families First of Massachusetts, and the Children’s Defense Fund’s ‘Beat The Odds’ program.
He is currently working on his third book of narrative nonfiction, dealing with the issue of trauma and the painkilling epidemic that has disproportionately impacted his community over the past twenty years.

Share