John Donnelly spent thirty years as a reporter, based in Jerusalem; Cairo; South Africa; Haiti; Washington, D.C.; New York; Miami; and Vermont. At The Boston Globe, he closely covered issues around global health, from both Washington and from countries around the world, reporting on the vast gulf between people’s needs for basic health care and governments’ inabilities to provide that care.
He also reported for The Miami Herald and the Associated Press, winning several awards for his work. Following his journalism career, he spent one decade at the World Bank, working as an advisor for both the World Bank President and the CEO of the International Finance Corporation.
Donnelly is the author of two earlier nonfiction books—A Twist of Faith and Beyond Murder (co-authored with John Philpin)—and a former fellow of Duke University and the Kaiser Family Foundation. He received a Bellagio residency from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2024, which helped in the writing of Lifeline. He lives outside Washington, D.C.