When Joan Donaldson was nine, she cut off the back of a cereal box and pasted on it a piece of lined paper. Throughout the year, she listed the birds visiting her family’s feeder. She also wrote down the birds she spied when her family took nature walks on Sunday afternoons. Now, she hikes around her 100-acre farm, watching the bluebirds bob over her family’s blueberry patch and listening to the Sandhill Cranes.
In college, Joan majored in geology that provided opportunities to slither through caves and climb rock outcrops. During a month-long course on how to make topographical maps, she became lost in the New Mexico desert. She gave up being a geologist and married a fruit farmer.
With her husband, John, they converted the family’s blueberry patch to organic methods, constructed numerous timber-framed buildings and lived off the grid for thirty years. Now they sell electricity from their large bank of solar panels to the local power company.
In 2008, Joan earned her Masters in Fine Arts from Spalding University with a concentration in writing creative nonfiction. After graduation, she returned home and began building an 1850s style farmhouse that resembles the houses in Historic Rugby. Joan writes in a small room with blue and white wallpaper, a maroon wooden bookshelf and two cat beds for Turnip and Puca who take turns supervising her work.
When Joan needs a break from her computer screen, she works in her garden surrounded by heirloom roses that release their perfume from red, yellow, pink and white blossoms. Kale, broccoli, winter squash and pole beans thrive in the beds mulched with compost, while blackberries and red raspberries hang over on their trellis. Joan loves to sit on the rose arbor, petting her cats, or playing her small wire harp. She believes gardens should nurture both body and spirit. You can read about her garden and writing life in her Substack column, From My Garden.
Joan is represented by Terrie Wolfe of AKA Literary Management. Terrie can be reached at: 646-846-2478
When Joan Donaldson was nine, she cut off the back of a cereal box and pasted on it a piece of lined paper. Throughout the year, she listed the birds visiting her family’s feeder. She also wrote down the birds she spied when her family took nature walks on Sunday afternoons. Now, she hikes around her 100-acre farm, watching the bluebirds bob over her family’s blueberry patch and listening to the Sandhill Cranes.
In college, Joan majored in geology that provided opportunities to slither through caves and climb rock outcrops. During a month-long course on how to make topographical maps, she became lost in the New Mexico desert. She gave up being a geologist and married a fruit farmer.
With her husband, John, they converted the family’s blueberry patch to organic methods, constructed numerous timber-framed buildings and lived off the grid for thirty years. Now they sell electricity from their large bank of solar panels to the local power company.
In 2008, Joan earned her Masters in Fine Arts from Spalding University with a concentration in writing creative nonfiction. After graduation, she returned home and began building an 1850s style farmhouse that resembles the houses in Historic Rugby. Joan writes in a small room with blue and white wallpaper, a maroon wooden bookshelf and two cat beds for Turnip and Puca who take turns supervising her work.
When Joan needs a break from her computer screen, she works in her garden surrounded by heirloom roses that release their perfume from red, yellow, pink and white blossoms. Kale, broccoli, winter squash and pole beans thrive in the beds mulched with compost, while blackberries and red raspberries hang over on their trellis. Joan loves to sit on the rose arbor, petting her cats, or playing her small wire harp. She believes gardens should nurture both body and spirit. You can read about her garden and writing life in her Substack column, From My Garden.
Joan is represented by Terrie Wolfe of AKA Literary Management. Terrie can be reached at: 646-846-2478
