Joan Donaldson

In 2010, Joan Donaldson's novel, On Viney's Mountain, won the Friends of American Writers Award for outstanding Young Adult novel and represented the State of Tennessee at the National Book Festival. In the spring of 2026, her essay SAND was published by Belt Publishing in the anthology, On An Inland Sea, edited by Michael Welsh. Her manuscript, Smooth Stones, won third place in the Historical Novel Society's 2026 First Page contest in the 17-19th century category. When not writing essays or novels, Joan lives on an organic blueberry farm in Southwest Michigan, plays her harp and cuddles her cats, Puca and Turnip.