Joan Donaldson Joins On An Inland Sea, a New Great Lakes Anthology from Belt Publishing

Joan Donaldson’s essay “SAND” appears in On An Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes, the new anthology edited by Michael Welch and published by Belt Publishing on March 10, 2026. The collection gathers more than thirty writers who have spent their lives in conversation with the lakes, and Joan’s contribution sits among work by Kenzie Allen, Gabriel Bump, Kathleen Rooney, and others who know that water this large is a country of its own.

Joan writes from Pleasant Hill Farm in Fennville, Michigan, the organic blueberry farm she has worked with her husband John for more than four decades. The lake is part of her daily geography, and her essay carries the same quiet attention to land and labor that readers have come to expect from her Cumberland Mountain novels and her farming memoir Wedded to the Land.

On An Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes is available now from Belt Publishing and from booksellers everywhere.