Skip to content

Bill Donahue is a writer for Outside, Harper’s, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and more…

Bill Donahue · Writer
  • About
  • Stories
  • Unbound
  • Up The Creek

Stories  History

  • Adventure
  • Africa
  • Arts and Letters
  • Asia
  • Backpacker
  • Bicycling
  • Bloomberg Businessweek
  • Business
  • Canada
  • Cultural Survival
  • Environment
  • Essays
  • Family
  • Geopolitics
  • Gilmanton
  • Harper’s
  • History
  • Latin America
  • New England
  • Outside
  • Pacific Northwest
  • Politics
  • Profiles
  • Religion
  • Runner’s World
  • Science
  • Sports
  • The Atavist
  • The Atlantic
  • The New York Times Magazine
  • The Washington Post Magazine
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
February 25, 2017July 1, 2021 by Bill Donahue

Painting the Fence

The joys and agonies of maintaining the picket fence at my family’s ancient home in New Hampshire. 

Yankee 
Edited by Ian Aldrich. Illustration by Cindy Rizza.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
July 4, 2016October 10, 2017 by Bill Donahue

Runaway

Of the hundred slaves to toil for President George Washington, Ona Judge was the only one to escape and tell her story.

Amazon Kindle Singles
Edited by Ali Castleman.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
June 29, 2015October 10, 2017 by Bill Donahue

Rise of a Running Nation

Lon Myers was the greatest American runner of the nineteenth century and also a Sephardic Jew. In 1882, he ran a series of three one-on-one footraces against England’s best runner, Walter George, at the Polo Grounds, in New York City.

Runner’s World
Edited by Christine Fennessy. Illustrations by Bruce Emmet.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
March 23, 2014October 9, 2017 by Bill Donahue

The Hero’s March

Searching for the ghost of Russian novelist Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.

The Washington Post Magazine
Edited by David Rowell. Photographs by Oleg Gritskevich.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
March 27, 2013October 9, 2017 by Bill Donahue

Naked Joe

In August, 1913, pudgy middle-aged Joe Knowles stepped naked into the woods of Maine, to see if he could live as a primitive man. When he returned home to Boston two months later, clad in a bearskin,  200,000 people greeted him.

Boston Magazine
Edited by Toby Lester.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
November 13, 2011October 9, 2017 by Bill Donahue

The Secret World of Saints

Inside the Catholic Church and the mysterious process of anointing the holy dead.

Byliner Originals
Edited by Laura Hohnhold.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
August 17, 2010October 9, 2017 by Bill Donahue

Flogging Genghis Khan

Bicycling to the world’s largest statue of Genghis Khan, in Mongolia. Edited by Tim Lavin.

The Atlantic
Edited by Tim Lavin. Photo by Jeffrey Kerby.

Read this story »…

Continue reading
April 30, 2010October 10, 2017 by Bill Donahue

The Green Bicycle Murder

On a warm summer evening in 1919, a comely young factory worker named Bella Wright set out for a bicycle ride through the country lanes outside Leicester, England. What happened next involved a revolver, a raven, and a shady character on a high-end green bicycle. 

Bicycling
Edited by Bill Strickland. Illustrations by Chris Gall. 

Read this story » …

Continue reading
November 15, 2009October 9, 2017 by Bill Donahue

Channeling Sappho

The poet Mary Barnard was an extremely private person, and single throughout her entire life. Her verse was spare and a bit cold, devoid of people. So how is that her 1958 book—Sappho: A New Translation—perfectly captured the Greek lyric poet, in all her sublime sensuality? Edited by Chris Lydgate.

Reed Magazine
Edited by Chris Lydgate.


Read this story » …

Continue reading
Page 2 of 3‹123›

Contact

  billdonahuewriter@gmail.com
  Subscribe
  @billdonahue13


© Bill Donahue. All rights reserved.

Site photography:
Cycling in the hills of New Hampshire, by Hector Emanuel. Cross country skiing in the Alaskan Arctic, by Otso Könönen. Interviewing Syrian refugees in Idomeni, Greece, by Julius Motal. Among the Maasai in Kenya, by Georgina Goodwin. At the desk, by Julie Keefe. Outside the barn, by Michele Olvera. Scrambling across Thompson Peak boulder field, by Justin Garwood.

Website by curio museum design.

No Fields Found.