Michael Patrick MacDonald

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times Bestseller,  All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and the acclaimed  Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. He has won the American Book Award, a New England Literary Lights Award, and an award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Both books are frequent selections for campus reads. 

After losing four siblings and seeing his generation decimated by poverty, crime, addiction, and incarceration. MacDonald became a leading Boston organizer, launching anti-violence initiatives including gun-buyback programs and support networks for survivors. He continues to work in Boston, Belfast, and North Inner City Dublin with survivor families, educators, and youth workers, using his restorative justice coalition-building curriculum, The Rest of the Story.

MacDonald has been awarded multiple residencies including at MacDowell and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. In 2019 he received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to teach at Queens University, Belfast. He is a Professor of the Practice in Northeastern University’s Honors Program and writes and speaks on topics ranging from race and class in America to transforming trauma to voice, agency, and leadership. He is currently writing his third book of narrative nonfiction.

Colum McCann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories and two works of non-fiction. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honors, including the U.S National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the president and co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4. He is the Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence in Hunter College, in New York, where he lives with his wife Allison and their family. His most recent novel, Apeirogon, became an immediate New York Times best-seller and won several major international awards.