JM Donellan

Category: art

  • Dearest Ministers of Education: please buy 2 million copies of Zeb and the Great Ruckus.

    To: senator.collins@aph.gov.au, education@ministerial.qld.gov.au Dear Mr Langbroek (State Minister for Education) and Mrs Collins (Federal Minister for School Education), I’m sure that your political parties are very busy dismantling essential health services and implementing draconian internet security protocols respectively. I would, however like to borrow a few moments of your valuable time to talk about an important issue, which is the dire…

  • ATTN: THE UNIVERSE! ZEB IS HERE!

    Dearest internet. It’s been a long time coming, but my children’s fantasy novel, Zeb and the Great Ruckus, has finally arrived! It’s been described as ‘like 1984 for kids, but with more magic, music and explosions’ and will be available for your rapturous enjoyment from the 15th of September! FACT: Reading this book will give…

  • R.I.P. Rave

    As a teenage music nerd, my bedroom walls were perennially populated by posters featuring various scowling dudes with guitars looking down on me lying on my bed losing myself in my headphones whilst devouring Rave magazine. Growing up I always thought that being a music writer would be the most inconceivably, unbelievably, incontrovertibly cool job imaginable. Years later, I moved…

  • Inaugural Premier’s Obituary Award

    My Dearest Queensland, I have just returned from a weekend swimming in your resplendant blue waters at Stradbroke island, followed by two nights in the majestic sunshine coast hinterland, only to return to Brisbane and discover that Campbell 'I hate the arts so much you'd think they strangled my puppy' Newman has scrapped the Queensland…

  • Eighty Nine book trailer

    Hey look! My first ever book trailer! For a compilation I was part of recently, featuring my piece 'The Story Bridge' set here in Brisbane in the nearish future. More info here: http://literarymixtapes.com/our-anthologies/eighty-nine/    

  • BNE artist interviews #1: Erica Field

    Today’s entry is part of a new monthly series where I will be interviewing artists from Brisbane. For the first installment I sit down with my good friend Erica Field as she talks about transforming herself into a boy, bleeding on stage and falling in love with the audience. photo: Sean Young JD: I’ve heard…

  • Paper girl festival video interview

        Writers aren't used to having our faces (or any other parts) on camera. Despite spending most of our lives desperately trying to communicate through the use of various combinations of 26 letters and a small selection of punctuation marks that the modern world is increasingly less interested in correctly utilising, we are a…

  • Diet Tips from the Vampire Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Who Played a Game of Thrones With Fire

    Good Morrow to you, Sirs and Madams of the Big Six consortium of publishers! I trust you are well. Before I tell you about the EXCITING!!!! opportunity I am offering you today, I have to ask, are you ever concerned by the fact that your informal collective moniker sounds like some kind of crime syndicate?…

  • Chali 2na at the BNE hifi reviewed for Rave magazine

    original article HERE.   Criminally underrated local act Coalition Crew are the first of four obscenely impressive lists of performers representing three different continents this evening. They deliver a solid set of tight, clever rhymes over golden era-influenced beats and bass. Bankrupt Billionaires, a recent addition to the local scene, are next up on stage. Their…

  • Illustrator acquired!

      Ladies and Gentlememes, I am so excited about this announcement THAT I AM GOING TO USE CAPS UNTIL THE END OF THIS SENTENCE! My publisher, Odyssey Books, and I have found an illustrator/cover artist for Zeb and The Great Ruckus (the novel that will inspire a generation of children to pick up guitars and…