Patrick Range McDonald is the best-selling author and award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles, California. He has dedicated his career to holding the powerful accountable and giving voice to the voiceless.
He has written for alternative weekly newspapers in New York and Los Angeles, including the Village Voice, the New York Press, the Westchester County Weekly, New Times L.A., and L.A. Weekly. McDonald was also a contributing writer at The Advocate, the nation’s largest LGBT news magazine.
As a longtime staff writer at L.A. Weekly, McDonald earned numerous awards, including “Journalist of the Year” from the Los Angeles Press Club and the national “Public Service” award from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
As an author, McDonald co-wrote Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan’s memoir, The Mayor: How I Turned Around Los Angeles After Riots, an Earthquake and the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial. With a foreward by President Bill Clinton, the book was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times best seller.
McDonald also penned Righteous Rebels: AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Crusade to Change the World. Traveling around the globe to witness AHF’s work firsthand, McDonald reveals the inspiring, untold story of the world’s largest HIV/AIDS medical-care nonprofit. AHF has saved countless lives around the globe.
In a review, The Lancet, the prestigious medical journal, wrote: “McDonald has managed a deft balancing act with this book: on one hand providing a fascinating inside view of a billion-dollar non-profit organization, while on the other hand providing a history of both the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the AIDS crisis, full of human interest and compelling portraits of the major players in the organization. However, this book was written with a larger purpose in mind: to inspire readers to take action and to provide a ‘blueprint for how anyone can absolutely change the world.'”
McDonald was the historical consultant for the documentary Keeping the Promise: AHF 30 Years, narrated by Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep.
He is currently the advocacy journalist for Housing Is A Human Right, the housing advocacy division of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Battling the real estate industry, Housing Is A Human Right seeks community-based solutions for the housing affordability and homelessness crises. For his work, McDonald received the “Best Activism Journalism” award from the Los Angeles Press Club. In 2022, he wrote a short book, Selling Off California: The Untold Story, about the powerful alliances and devastating policies that fuel the housing affordability and homelessness crises in California.
McDonald was born in New Jersey. He earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Fordham University and a graduate’s degree in Magazine Writing from New York University’s School of Journalism. McDonald can be found on Instagram. He lives in California.