A day in the life of… Stella Donnelly

You know what’s easier than following around your fave pop stars, day in, day out, to see what they’re up to right that minute? Asking them. This month, we nab Stella Donnelly.

5:30 am → I get woken up by Marcel’s alarm; he works in a bakery, which is worth it for the free bread despite the early alarm. I doze for another hour or so, then I get up and feed Neil, our 14-year-old cat, who needs two tablets crushed into his food twice a day so his thyroid is kept in check. I make myself a cup of tea and find a patch of sun to sit in outside while listening to Breakfast with Flo on NTS and pretending that I’m tuning in live even though I’m half a day ahead in Melbourne.

7:30 am → I go for a run and use Kneecap to propel my body forward past the tawny frogmouths that nest in the tree at the park, past the dog walkers all huddled together making small talk, past my old sharehouse that is still full of the people I love, then home for eggs on toast. I get stuck in an Instagram hole for about an hour at this point, egg yolk drying on my plate.

9:00 am → My friend recently got me a job at a cemetery doing gender impact assessments (for the living), so I do a bit of that for a few hours and try not to get distracted by music admin stuff sitting in my inbox.

1:00 pm → I drive to South Melbourne to my other job, which is running songwriting workshops for musicians living with visible or invisible disabilities. Today the theme is music inspired by visual art, so I have a bunch of paints, cuttings and postcards for us to use as well as some chord progressions that people can use as a foundation for their song. The participants always leave me feeling inspired and emotional with their beautiful songwriting.

5:00 pm → On my way home, I dash into Basfoods, the Mediterranean wholesaler, and pick up two frozen Spanakopitas and some Ajvar. Marcel picks leafy greens from the garden, and we make a salad and put the pastries in the oven. 

6:00 pm →  My bandmates come over and we rehearse in our shed. We pick three songs a week to work on; it’s a tight squeeze with six of us in there, but I love it so much. Tonight we do ‘Die, Feel it Change’ and ‘How Was Your Day?’ We all sit and eat dinner together, and I feel so lucky that I get to play music with people I love. We make Bengal Spice and Sleepytime tea for everyone and do another half-assed hour of playing before calling it a night. 

9:00 pm → I write in my journal, which I find stops me from waking up at 3am and ruminating about things I should have done and jokes I should never have made. Marcel and I continue watching Lord of the Rings. Gandalf the Grey is now Gandalf the White.

10:00 pm → Dead.

Taken from the November 2025 issue of Dork. Stella Donnelly’s album ‘Love and Fortune’ is out 7th November.