Michael Patrick MacDonald

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times Bestseller All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, which dealt with his family struggles in the South Boston Old Colony Housing Projects – and the larger issue of race and class in America. All Souls won an American Book Award and a New England Literary Lights Award. MacDonald's second book, Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion, focuses on his teenage years beyond Southie and the Old Colony Housing Project. MacDonald is currently writing a screenplay combining the two books.

A long-time Boston activist and writer, from 1990 through 1998 MacDonald focused on coalition building to reduce violence in Boston. He is a co-founder of Boston's citywide gun buyback program (1993 through 1997), and is the founder of the South Boston Vigil Group, which functioned to give a voice to that neighborhood's survivors of violence and the drug trade.

Currently, MacDonald teaches two courses at Northeastern University: Conflict and Resolution in Northern Ireland and Nonfiction and Social Justice Issues. He is also certified as a "circle keeper" for restorative justice circles, a justice process wherein victims and perpetrators come to mutually-agreed upon solutions for conflict resolution.

MacDonald has been awarded an Anne Cox Chambers Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, a Bellagio Center Fellowship through the Rockefeller Foundation, and residencies at Djerassi and Blue Mountain Center. He is currently working on his third book of nonfiction.