“Watch me in a room with others tasked with storytelling: I will draft a sentence in the time others fill a page. I appear almost motionless but my mind is racing: strategising, establishing purpose, analysing, filtering tactics. I am choosing each word like an expensive gift, a weapon, assessing its weight, the feel of it in my hands, its suitability for the task. A wrong word will make for a different trajectory, a different outcome, unintended consequences. A wrong word will change the shape of the world I am building, like a foundational brick misaligned.”

The Integrity Cure

Books

Coming soon

The Integrity Cure: Stories of a Bipolar Half-Life

Thirty years. Thirty stories. One hell of a ride to full recovery. What if honesty is all it takes to set you free? Get your dose from Thorndon Press in 2025.

Out now

Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child-adjacent.

A rich and bold conversation about what makes a fulfilling life, including “Selfish” by Donelle McKinley. Edited by Alie Benge, Lil O’Brien and Kathryn van Beek, Massey University Press, 2024.

What’s next

Blaze: A Collection of Sparks

In her second collection of creative non-fiction, Donelle McKinley examines what it means to commit to integrity, trust intuition, and define freedom from the inside out.