Ed Macdonald was born and raised on Cape Breton Island. The youngest of five children, Macdonald had little interest in anything other than comedy and aliens. Though he had no love for academics he went to school because the classroom had a captive audience. At The University of Cape Breton Macdonald spent most of his time in the playhouse, rehearsing and trying to figure out the mechanics of the play.
In 2001, Macdonald's play Gemini opened at the 78th Street Theatre Lab and received great reviews, including a rave from The Village Voice. Gemini was later remounted by NBC in their showcase space, PSNBC. Since then, several of his plays including Mutant Sex Party, The Escape Artist, Erratica and Titus Lucretius Carus have been produced by The Drilling Company. Titus Lucretius Caras was nominated for the New York Innovative Theatre Award.
In the mid 90's, Macdonald began staff writing on TV shows such as 22 Minutes and many others. Since then, he has written and produced countless hours of television and has won three Gemini Awards for excellence in writing. He has been nominated numerous times. He has won the prestigious Writers' Guild of Canada Award and The Golden Sheaf Award, among others.
Though his acting career died in the shade of his writing obsession, Ed Macdonald can be seen in episodes of Trailer Park Boys, Hatching Matching and Dispatching, The Bette Show and, briefly, in The Jon Dore Televsion Show. He was also the show runner. Macdonald's first film role was in 1984 opposite Josephine Chaplin and Kiefer Sutherland in Daniel Petrie's The Bay Boy.
His first novel, Spat The Dummy was written in Montreal where Macdonald lived for a decade. Released in 2010, Spat won rave reviews and was was nominated for the QWF First Book Award.
Mutant Sex Party and other plays was released in 2012. Most of the plays in the collection were first produced by The Drilling Company in New York.
Ed Macdonald's most recent novel, Atomic Storybook, was released in 2014.
