JM Donellan

Author: Josh

  • Blog Tour

    Hello there humans and approximate facsimiles, I am excited to tell you that this week I am in the middle of a blog tour. A blog tour is basically like a hedonistic punk rock tour except without all the hotel room trashing. Or chain smoking. Or public performance. Or actual touring. But what it does…

  • Library

    I originally wrote this poem when I was invited to do a speech to honour the opening of the Ann Christopherson library at Ipswich East primary school, and it’s been one of my favourites to perform ever since. Also, unlike most of my poetry, it’s very ‘clean,’ so it’s safe to perform for younger audiences (although…

  • Look ma! I’ve gone viral!

    Remember when Australia had a Minister for Science? Ah, good times, good times. Well, back in those dizzy halcyon days in the distant past (about a month ago) I wrote an angry little letter to Teresa Gambaro. It was just before the election and I was feeling angry and confused about the state of politics…

  • #BWF13

    Thanks to TIny Owl workshop for organising lots of great stories to be printed on cushions at the Brisbane Writers Festival. Here’s a couple of cuties modelling my story Lenore Meets a Mack Truck. Thank you to everyone who purchased one via donations to the Indigenous Literacy Fund.       

  • Fan art

  • Don’t ever contact me again for any reason including the apocalypse.

      Dear Teresa, After receiving personally addressed but entirely unsolicited mail from your office for the third time, I decided I would send you a polite request to never again send me any kind of communication at all, ever. This includes, but is not limited to, letters, phone calls, text messages, morse code, Da Vinci…

  • Tony Abbott’s morning schedule

     6.30 Tony is awakened by the sounds of the dozens of minimum wage employees that he keeps in a cage in his quarters gnashing their teeth and wailing. He throws them a few chunks of bread and a splash of water, chuckling as he tells them that if they’re good, more should ‘trickle down’ later…

  • Internet dating

        Hello there potential lover. I hope that you are having a nice day. Recently I broke up with the most amazing girl in the world, thus obliterating my last remaining vestiges of belief in the existence of real and eternal love. As a result, I am now resigning myself to what my generation…

  • Editing advice.

    One question I get asked a lot is ‘What advice do you have for someone writing their first book?’ I guess the main thing would be, however long you think it’s going to take to edit your novel, add 20%. Then double it. Then multiply that by ten (million). Then triple it. Then yell out…

  • Love Letter to Lisbon (OR Art in the Time of Recession).

      Recently I was travelling with an economist, an artist and a doctor. I know that sounds like the set up for a joke, but it’s actually just the first sentence of a love letter. (Or possibly essay. Or a tweet in need of serious editing, I don’t know you, read it and let me…