Joan Donaldson is an award winning author of books for young people, and an accomplished essayists whose work won the 2007 Hearst Prize for Excellence in Narrative Nonfiction at the Mayborn Conference. On Viney's Mountain won the 2010 Friends of American Writers Award, was chosen to represent the State of Tennessee at the 2010 National Book Festival in Washington DC, and appeared on the Bank Street List of the Best Books of 2010. When not writing fiction, she writes for A Simple Life and other magazines. Along with her husband of 40 years, she raises organic blueberries in southwestern Michigan and plays Scottish fiddle tunes on her harp