About Veronica McDonald

Veronica McDonald is a published fiction writer, poet, visual artist, and editor. She graduated from American University in Washington D.C. with an M.A. Degree in Literature, and has since accumulated a growing list of published work.

In 2019, Veronica started a literary and art journal called Heart of Flesh, where she publishes Christian-themed literature, poetry, art, and photography by writers and artists from around the world. In 2021, she began a literary magazine for kids and families, called Pure in Heart Stories.

Veronica became a born-again Christian in July 2016 when Jesus saved her from anxiety, depression, and a nihilistic worldview.  Since then, she has been fascinated with good and evil, love and fear, life and death, and the various ways the Gospel and biblical themes shine out of secular literature, movies, and storytelling. This fascination is often reflected in her writing and art. You can read her full testimony on the Heart of Flesh website here.

Veronica currently lives in Mobile, Alabama with her husband and three children.

About the Writing

Veronica’s writing tends to fall into the “dark” category.  Initially, this was due to a love of psychological horror and dark, strange literature. After becoming a Christian, however, Veronica’s goals in writing “dark” are to show the futility of searching for hope in the darkness, and to demonstrate the power of light and goodness when it shines in dark places. In both her poems and stories, she likes to play with magical realism, grotesque characters, isolated settings, childhood memories, painful realizations and conversions, and contrasting the innocent with the monstrous.

Veronica’s characters are often people who have little hope, who believe they are their own god, who realize that what they thought would give them happiness leaves them empty, or people who love dark things even though these things destroy them. She writes about these people because she was one of them, and loves them, and wants any reader who connects with them to realize that there is hope and a better life out there (found in Jesus Christ).

Veronica’s Blog is a place where she experiments with poetry and fiction, and occasionally writes book reviews. Here she also attempts to encourage other writers through poetry prompts, and posts personal poems as she learns to improve her own skills and how to glorify God through poetry.

About the Art

Veronica primarily paints scenes inspired by the Bible and by her own journey in faith.  She enjoys creating portraits where she can draw out the spectrum of colors she sees in people and animals, and likes to experiment with different painting techniques. She works primarily with acrylics, but plays with a variety of media: oil paints, collage, tissue paper, oil pastels, watercolors, photography, wood-burning, and anything else that inspires her.

Follow Veronica

You can find Veronica on Instagram or Facebook. You can also e-mail her directly at mail@veronicamcdonald.com.

Interviews