Mr. Terry McDonell

New York, NY

Terry McDonell retired from Time, Inc. as senior editorial advisor in 2012 after editing the Sports Illustrated Group’s magazines and websites for ten years. Over his career, Mr. McDonell edited numerous award-winning magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Golf Magazine, Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Men’s Journal, and was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in 2012. He now heads the editorial group McDonell Company, which advises media companies and develops publishing, video, and film ventures across multiple platforms, and most recently cofounded LitHub.com to report on and serve the literary community. 

Widely published as a journalist, Mr. McDonell is also a novelist and poet who has written and produced for film and television. He published his memoir, The Accidental Life, in 2016, and he donated his professional archive to the Briscoe Center in 2015. Mr. McDonell currently serves as president of the board of directors of the Paris Review Foundation and on the Board of Overseers of the Columbia Journalism Review. Mr. McDonell served on the executive jury for the 2019 Morley Safer Award for Outstanding Reporting produced by the Briscoe Center.