One Last Ride in the Old World

Originally published in the The Surfer’s Journal. By JOE DONNELLY The winter was dry, too dry, until it wasn’t. When the rains finally came, they kept coming. Slow, steady, torrential, a brief time out, a sliver of sun, and then the cycle repeated. In the springtime of the plague, it seemed that even the sun […]

Propelled on a Zephyr of Compressed Wind

CR Stecyk, the Smithsonian, and the first airbrushed surfboard. Originally published in the The Surfer’s Journal. By JOE DONNELLY Stored somewhere deep in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, along with other markers of pre-collapse American life gleaned from hundreds of years of material history, is a singular surfboard […]

Wrecking Crews: Remembering John Albert and his lost generation

Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. By JOE DONNELLY I REMEMBER WHEN my relationship dynamic with the late writer John Albert went from being friendly acquaintances to something like the hipster Honeymooners. It was when my then-wife and I moved into a house up the street from John and his then-wife. It […]

The Passionate Conversationalist: On Scott Timberg’s “Boom Times for the End of the World”

Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. By JOE DONNELLY ALTHOUGH IT RIGHTFULLY should be read as a celebration of his life and work, for those who knew and loved Scott Timberg, or just appreciated what he did and stood for, there is no separating Boom Times for the End of the World […]

God of Sperm: Cappy Rothman’s Life in Conception

By JOE DONNELLY with CAPPY ROTHMAN God of Sperm: Cappy Rothman’s Life in Conception is available now. “Dr. Cappy Rothman’s career is without parallel in modern medicine. Do you know any physician who actually started a brand new medical specialty, has been responsible for bringing a quarter million babies into the world to parents who […]

Embracing the Despised Poems: Remembering Scott Timberg

SCOTT TIMBERG took his life on December 10, 2019, a fact that sits with me here unreconciled as I read the posthumously released Beeswing, his book with Richard Thompson. I’d probably be thinking of Scott even without this reminder of his passions, as I’ve thought about him every day since he killed himself, the way […]

It’s here! So Cal: Dispatches from the End of the World

So Cal: Dispatches from the End of the World is available now. The new collection is a wide-ranging survey of Southern California-centric characters, capers and aesthetics. The thing about Joe is he’s so busy championing his friends, it’s easy to forget what a great writer he is. Reading through the pieces that follow, I was […]

Messiah Wolf

When I was a boy, my imagination was ripe for wolves…

Red Canary Magazine

Sponsored by Red Canary Collective™, Red Canary Magazine is an independently staffed and executed publication launched in collaboration with award-winning journalist and writer, Joe Donnelly. We provide space for difference-making work focusing on environmental, social justice and equity issues. While the need is urgent, we endeavor to approach our mission with humor, hope and humility. […]

The Confirmation of Danny Kwock

By JOE DONNELLY This piece originally appeared in the The Surfer’s Journal.  PDF available here.   Danny Kwock’s hair is long. Like, hippie long. This might surprise those who’ve leafed through the tome The Eighties at Echo Beach, or are old enough to have been there and remember when Kwock, Preston Murray, Jeff Parker, Peter […]