Hugh MacDonald is a Charlottetown-born writer who has lived all his life in Prince Edward Island.
He taught school there and now writes full time. Hugh was president of the P.E.I. Writers' Guild and Vice-Chair of the P.E.I. Council of the Arts.
He is winner of the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Literary Arts on P.E.I. for 2004, the L.M. Montgomery Children's Literature Award, first prize, 1990, the Bennett Carr Award, 1990, Children's Literature Award, second prize, 1991, and the Atlantic Poetry Competition, first prize, 1994.
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 Letting Go
An Anthology of Loss and Survival
This anthology is basedon the experience of fifty-nine writers who are survivors of loss.
This remarkable collection of stories and poems by some of Canada's most exciting contemporary writers young and old offers a wide variety of answers to the oft asked question: How will I ever be able to get through this?
Poems and Stories, 162 pages, 6 x 9, $19.95
ISBN 0-88753-393-0
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 Cold Against the Heart
In Hugh MacDonald’s poetry, one touches down upon reality in a sudden and surprising way. His poems sing of the Maritimes, and what it was like to grow up by the sea. He writes about the memories of a grandfather, and walking in the woods with him, and feeling safe, and carrying the axes and buck saws and hardboiled eggs.
MacDonald writes about farming on Prince Edward Island where he grew up, and where the earth is hard and red. The poems also revolve around church life, and the daily life of making a living on the eastern seaboard, buying a car, a first marriage, and the loneliness that a writer can feel when he is left with his thoughts.
Poetry, Palm Poets Series, 96 pages, $17.95
ISBN 0-88753-377-9
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 Looking For Mother
Winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize
(These poems) moved me beyond words, to tears, reminding me of all the people I have worked with and known, whom Alzheimer Disease had reduced to a shell of their selves. I though too, of my mother, who died a year ago, and envied you the talent of writing as a way of coping with the complex emotions associated with such an experience.
Mary Ann Chang, Executive Director Metropolitan Alzheimer Society
Looking for Mother is a stunning collection of poetry that so moved the judges of the 1994 Atlantic Poetry Competition that it won Hugh MacDonald of Prince Edward Island's top prize for poetry.
See 2006 review.
Poetry, 64 pages $14.95
ISBN 0-88753-255-1
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 Tossed Like Weeds From The Garden
Hugh MacDonald draws upon his storytelling abilities to write about what it’s like to grow up there, what it’s like to live there. In a previous book, Looking For Mother, which won him the Atlantic Poetry Prize, he concentrated upon the Alzheimer’s Disease his mother suffered from.
MacDonald returns to his youth, to the streets and parks of Charlottetown where he grew up. He writes about street hockey, the summers of drifting out on the water. His documentary poems also recount the stories of spending a few weeks on his grandfather’s farm outside of Georgetown on the east end of the Island.
Tossed Like Weeds From The Garden covers the ground between coming of age and the coming of old age with enticing humour and considerable wit.
Poetry, 68 pages, $16.95
ISBN 0-88753-330-2
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The Digging of Deep Wells
MacDonald takes the reader into his confidence on a private journey through the emotional and spiritual responses the poet has toward middle age, parenthood, pivotal moments in adolescence and hidden male vulnerability.
There are, in this mostly narrative selection of poetry, verses of celebration depicting whatit is like to play hockey, grow up, attend church, and live in pastoral P.E.I. There are also verses that tell of the frustration MacDonald feels as a helpless observer in a world that, despite the advent of each new generation, remains as illogical as ever.
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