Previous Mentorship Winners Reflect on the Experience

The SCBWI-MI mentorship program began in 2000. The application period for the 2026 novel mentorship with author Sheela Chari opens January 2, 2026 (with the winner announced in April). Today we hear from two previous novel mentorship winners about the experience. Joan Donaldson won the 2022-2023 mentorship and Kristin Bartley Lenz won a mentorship in 2018-2019.

1. How was the experience applying (were you nervous? had you applied before?)?

Joan Donaldson

Joan Donaldson: I had never applied before and didn't expect to win, so I was surprised and thrilled.

Kristin Bartley Lenz: The application process was easy because I already had a finished/revised manuscript that was ready to go, and it was my third time applying for the mentorship with various manuscripts over the years. I was probably quite nervous the first time I applied when I was new to SCBWI, but with each entry, I received encouraging, helpful feedback. I knew that even if I didn’t win the competition, my writing would benefit.

2. How was the mentorship experience itself?

JD: Because I had earned a MFA in creative writing, I had experience working with a mentor. Kelly [J. Baptist] was a terrific critique partner and could also act as a sensitivity reader for my manuscript. She had insightful comments, suggested books I should read, and asked several times if I wanted her to provide even more information.

Kristin Bartley Lenz

KBL: What a wonderful experience! Leslie Connor was my mentor, and she was so friendly and encouraging. The mentorship program has some guidelines, but it’s very flexible, and we set up a routine for critiquing/revising that worked for our schedules. This mentorship came at a difficult time in my writing career. I already had one published novel, but I had recently lost my agent who’d been unable to sell my next novel. Not only did Leslie help with revising my manuscript, but we also talked about school visits and speaking/teaching opportunities, and she was there to cheer me on when I began querying for a new agent. She was open about her own challenges too and gave me a glimpse into the life of a multi-published author, including the ups and downs.

3. How did the mentorship impact/affect your writing/career?

JD: Working with Kelly gave me more faith in my story involving a friendship between a white boy and an African American boy living on a cotton farm. Their families are share cropping. My agent loves my story, but so far no editor has snatched it up.

KBL: My writing career has been bumpy, and I’m still in touch with Leslie who’s been so supportive. I’ll fast-forward to today. I have a new agent and a new publishing contract! The Door Swings Open, my YA novel that won the mentorship competition way back in 2018-19 will finally be published in March 2026.

4. Is there any advice or encouragement you would offer to people applying?

JD: Put your work out there and see what happens. Even if you do not win the mentorship, you can always try again. Plus each time you polish a piece before submitting it, the manuscript sparkles even more.

KBL: Submit your best work that you love and be patient. If you don’t win, you’ll still receive valuable feedback and encouragement from the judges. If you do win, you’ll be spending many months working on your manuscript with no promise of publication, but you’ll grow as a writer and expand your community.

Looking for more information about the mentorship program to help you decide whether to apply? Here's some recent posts on the Mitten that may help: 

Mentorship coordinator Jessica Zimmerman explains the program and what you will receive (even if you don't win) 

Learn more about 2026 mentor Sheela Chari 

2018-2019 mentee Danielle DeFauw gives more reasons to apply

Remember, spots are limited and registration opens January 2. Good luck!

Questions? Email Jessica at scbwi.mi.mentorship@gmail.com

Writer Spotlight: Joan Donaldson

 

Organic berries, Rugby Tennessee, international fangirl, and a field of poppies: Joan Donaldson

Charlie Barshaw interviews SCBWI-MI children's book writers and illustrators for The Mitten. In this piece, meet Joan Donaldson, a longtime member with novels and picture books and a blueberry farm.

What does “organic” mean on your farm?

Our farm has been certified organic since 1977 and this means that we abide by the National Board that draws up organic standards. Every year, an inspector comes and reviews my husband’s records, looks over the farm, including our packing shed and blueberry line where we sort and pack our berries.

You said we had a tight window to get this interview done, sometime before early July or after the month of September. Is this a huge blueberry-growing operation? Or is it labor-intensive harvesting? 

We are a small family farm run by two people with a little hired help for pruning and on our blueberry packing line. John and I are the management, we also tackle any other task that needs to be done from processing orders (me) to picking off galls (both of us) to driving the blueberry shaker (John) to stacking 30# boxes on pallets. I also manage you-pick during the early part of the season. Most of our berries are packed into 30# boxes and frozen. We ship them around the eastern half of the US, and they are available at various stores in MI.

Hearts of Mercy (2019) has your young adult historical character Viney face off against what turns out to be an historical real-life group, the White Caps. By my count that makes three books featuring Viney. What kept drawing you back to Viney and the Appalachian land she inhabits?

For decades, I have maintained a strong interest in Appalachian culture, history, and literature. During the summer of 1974, I volunteered at a Presbyterian Mission far back in Eastern TN, just outside of the Great Smokey National Park.

When friends retired to Rugby, TN, they invited us to visit. While wandering through the historic buildings, I learned more about the colony and Thomas Hugh’s dreams of equality between sexes, races, and classes. I had to write about this agrarian community and how it influenced the area.

At first, I approached it from the POV of a British lad, Charlie, but the more I wrote about Viney, she took over the story. Plus, I realized that no one had ever written about Rugby from the POV of someone from Appalachia who would have seen the British as invaders.

After years of research and interviews, I wrote the first book. The second was my love letter to the Walker Sisters who are fascinating women who outsmarted the National Park Service. My agent is currently sending out a novel told by Lizzie and I have a couple of other Rugby books I would like to write for the series.

Song of Hope from 2018 illustrated by Michigan illustrator PJ Lyons. Sahana wants to be adopted into America. She could be a refugee from the Middle East, India, or Africa. Did you deliberately blur the specific details to make the story more universal?

Song of Hope deals with Child Sponsorship and is based on the experiences of a young girl whom I sponsored until she turned eighteen. My goal was to show children what life can be like for a young person in a developing country, and to alert them to the idea that they could sponsor a child. The book inspired a young friend to earn enough money to pay for school supplies for an African girl.

You’ve got a trilogy of picture books, with Song of Hope, The Secret of Red Shoes, and A Real Pretend. Red Shoes, I understand, is based on a family legend? Is A Real Pretend about something pretend becoming real?

Both The Secret of the Red Shoes and A Read Pretend came from family stories told to me by different friends. My imagination embellished them, but the basic elements are true.

A Pebble and a Pen (2000) is a middle grade historical novel about professional penmanship. What drove you to write this novel for young readers? 

In 1989, Tasha Tudor and I spent a week studying Spencerian Script from Master Penman, Michael Sull near the home of Platt Rogers Spencer in Ohio. During the mid and late nineteen century, Spencerian Script was the main form of penmanship taught in the United States. At the age of ten, Platt Rogers Spencer created the script from “the perfect forms in nature” such as the oval of a pebble, the angle of the rolling wave. Whenever I speak to groups of young people, I emphasize that he was only ten, yet Spencer changed the way a nation wrote. Who knows what a ten-year-old somewhere is creating that will change the world.

Why is historic Rugby a village you should fall in love with?

Most towns are founded by someone who settled the area, but Rugby was founded on the ideals of equality. Hughes wanted an Agrarian Utopian Community where working with your hands was respected. He imported young men who were the second sons of the landed gentry who did not want to follow society’s prescribed path.

Today, the folks who live in Rugby understand the need to preserve and promote that same sense of equality at a beautiful setting. Rugby is a peaceful village located at the edge of a National Park with numerous hiking trails. While Historic Rugby offers different sorts of events from ghostly storytelling at the cemetery to a May Day celebration, what I love about the place is the natural beauty and the hiking.

Your description of how you became a writer

After my first-grade teacher

Taught me to read and write,

I wrote a poem with my

Fat, red pencil

Is itself a poem.

Hmm, well, I don’t write poetry. I earned my Master in Fine Arts in writing nonfiction. Over the years I’ve published numerous essays in The Christian Science Monitor and in other magazines. Now I write and record my essays for Michigan Public Radio. And like Shirley, I write “passages” for a testing company.

Over the years you had a lot of mentors, influential women who pushed you to succeed.

I have been blessed by wonderful mentors from Tasha Tudor to Ellen Howard to the MFA faculty at Spalding University, and now by Kelly Baptist as part of the SCBWI-MI Mentorship opportunity.

One of those early mentors prompted you to write to your favorite author, Rumer Godden. She was popular and prolific. Oh, and she lived in the U.K. You wrote her a letter, and after a while, you got one back from Rumer Godden. Did you realize that you were blessed with good fortune, or was it just an international form letter? And what of the dolls?

Rumer Godden wrote me a personal letter which I still have. I had told her about my dolls and the doll house that my parents and I had built which resembled the illustration painted by Tasha Tudor on the cover Godden’s book The Doll House. Ms. Godden said that my dolls were much nicer than the characters in her book. Many years later, I asked Tasha Tudor where she had found a model for the cover illustration. She replied that she had imagined that image and my doll house was the only one that looked like her illustration.

You have a couple of e-booklets about cooking on a woodstove and making maple syrup. These published in 2013, as did Wedded to the Land, which also came out that year. What was going on in your life in 2013? And what was Wedded about?

Wedded is a collection of essays about my farm. The longer pieces were part of my creative thesis for my MFA while the shorter essays were published in The Christian Science Monitor. All I can remember of 2013 was how we were recovering from the devastation of 2012, an extremely hot year when fruit trees bloomed in March, and we lost 90% of our crop.

There is a photo of you playing a harp on your website. What can you tell us about the instrument?

The lever harp is a neo-classic Irish folk harp with nylon strings. I still have that harp and play it now and then, but for the past couple of years, I've concentrated on learning the ancient wire harp which requires different techniques. I attached a photo of me with my small wire harp and I recently bought a little larger wire harp with more bass strings. I play mainly Irish dance music and older airs along with some Scottish tunes. One of these days, I will write a novel about the Belfast Harp Gathering of 1792.

After the successful blueberry harvest, what's next?

My agent has shopped around a MG novel about a young girl who helps her grandfather train a team of oxen and then they take them to the fair. Terrie is also sending out a new novel for the Rugby series, plus an adult novel about Beaver Island during the reign of King Strang and I am writing a collection of essays about my time as a caretaker/companion for an amazing older woman with Parkinson Disease. And MI Radio just aired one of my short essays for Memorial Day.

This photo Joan sent needed context.  She explained:

That is our hay barn vs our goat barn vs our Big Barn that we raised in 1985. Every year, we plant a 4 acre wildflower field with red poppies, corn flowers and daisies. Now we plant it next to the Fennville Cemetery in honor of our son who served in Afghanistan,  returned with PTSD and took his life in 2015. If you check out the Pleasant Hill Farm Facebook page you will see scores of photo of the poppies.

Could it be said that at some point you wholeheartedly embraced the pioneer settler, down-to-earth, live-off-the-land lifestyle?

Yes, with a few twists like banks of solar panels and a wind generator for electricity.

 

Please share any social media links or contacts.

https://www.joandonaldson.com/

https://author.amazon.com/home

https://www.facebook.com/joan.donaldson

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/75124.Joan_Donaldson

Twitter:@sparrow3337

 

 

 

 

 

 

The SCBWI Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant by Joan Donaldson

In 1992, when Tasha Tudor illustrated my first picture book, it sold well. I believed that with hard work and attention to craft, editors would want my manuscripts, and I would develop a career as a children’s author. But instead, seven years passed before I signed another book contract. Editors often told me that I was a good writer, but they weren’t sure that there was a market for my stories. Like a car sputtering along on low fuel, I decided to invest in a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing so that I could hone my skills.

Earning a MFA at Spalding University was life changing.  I minored in writing for young people and majored in creative nonfiction. Mentors and fellow students encouraged my talents and suggested ways to improve my manuscripts. During the four falls that I attended Spalding, I sold a picture book manuscript, The Secret of the Red Shoes, and my young adult novel, On Viney’s Mountain. At last, my writing career was cruising!

When On Viney’s Mountain won the 2010 Friends of American Writer’s YA Award, became a finalist for the 2011 Bronte Prize for Romantic Literature, appeared on the Bank Street List of the Best Books of 2010, and represented the State of Tennessee at the 2010 National Book Festival. But even after promoting the novel, the book didn’t sell well. The publisher chose not to reprint it and my career at that publishing house ended.

When I read about the Jane Yolen Mid-list Author’s Grant, the description fit my writing career, especially the sentence about not selling a book manuscript in the past five years. Ms. Yolen created the grant not only to provide authors with a monetary sum that could be spent on hiring an editor or perhaps on marking, but also to encourage authors not to cease writing. I filled out an application that included a career summary and brief summary of my latest project, Mooey Bien, a middle grade novel about a friendship between a white girl and a Latino migrant girl.

When SCBWI informed me that Jane Yolen had awarded me an honor prize, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that Jane had affirmed my writing. On the stage with Jane at the New York SCBWI conference, I promised her that no matter what, I will continue to write.

For any Michigan SCBWI member who is discouraged because she or he hasn’t sold a manuscript in several years, consider filling out an application for the 2018 grant. Ponder how you would use the funds to fuel your career, and most of all, keep writing, dreaming and hoping that the next email will state that a publisher wants your book.

Joan Donaldson receives a hug onstage
from Jane Yolen at the SCBWI
Annual Winter Conference

Joan Donaldson writes from her organic blueberry farm near Saugatuck, Michigan. In the past, she has served on the SCBWI-MI board and as a judge for the mentorship contest. After earning her MFA in creative nonfiction, she has facilitated writing workshops at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. Learn more at
http://www.joandonaldson.com/books/.















Congrats again on this wonderful honor, Joan, and thank you for sharing your inspiring story. To learn more about the many SCBWI grants and awards, go here. Writers and illustrators who are looking for an extra dose of inspiration this spring or opportunities to network and grow your craft, check out these upcoming events from SCBWI-MI and more:

March 15th: final deadline for the SCBWI-MI Written Critique Program. Receive feedback on your manuscript from your choice of agents and editors.

March 25th: The Michigan Writing Workshop, Novi, MI. (Not an SCBWI event)

April 1st: Rochester Writer's Spring Conference, Writing for Children and Young Adults, Oakland University, Rochester, MI. (Not an SCBWI event)

April 29th: SCBWI-MI Marketing Bootcamp in East Lansing, more info soon

September 15-16th: SCBWI-MI Fall Retreat, Grand Rapids, more info to come

SCBWI-MI Shop Talks meet monthly. Click here to find a location near you.
Special Opportunity: The Lansing Area Shop Talk will meet at the Charlotte Library, March 25, 11am, to see award-winning Michigan author Gary D. Schmidt.

Happy creating!
Kristin Lenz

The 2017 SCBWI Annual Winter Conference: So Many Feelings by Andrea Donahoe

If my trip to the 2017 SCBWI-NY conference was a movie, it would be “Inside Out” because it was filled to the brim with So. Many. Feelings. Here are just a few…

Anxiety:
Frantically checking for flight updates in advance of the conference as word got around that a big storm was going to hit NYC and flights were being cancelled days in advance.

Happiness:
Boarding the plane and smiling out of the tiny jet window as I zoomed away from my husband, two kids, and three jobs for a weekend full of writing inspiration.

Grief:
Bryan Collier delivered the opening keynote. His passionate exploration of the grief of losing a father felt by the main character in KNOCK KNOCK brought a room of twelve hundred people to silence. I was brought to tears by the power of his words and their echo of my own recent loss of my father.

Delight:
-A panel on picture book types where Andrea Beaty described writing in rhyme to be like hearing music playing in another room and listening closer and closer to hear the words.

-A session on pacing in picture books with Silvie Frank that had me scribbling across the pages of my notebook as she walked through her editorial revision process.

Bravery:
The swirl of energy from the sessions of the day took a pause for the quietly powerful keynote address by Tahereh Mafi on the immense bravery it takes to declare yourself a writer, to keep going in the face of pain or rejection, and to remain vulnerable. She said writers must not develop a thick skin. We need a deep well of feelings in order to write, for “what good is a writer who cannot feel?”

Heidi Sheffield with her artwork

And then...

Portfolio Showcase Honor Awards

Joan Donaldson receives a hug from Jane Yolan

Joy:
-The evening mixer to where I got to visit with our fabulous Co-RAs Carrie and Leslie, other Michiganders, and fun folks from all over the world.

-The Sunday morning awards ceremony where Michigan was well represented by Heidi Sheffield for a Portfolio Showcase Honor Award, and by Joan Donaldson who received a Jane Yolen Midlist Author Honor Award. Woohoo!

- A fabulous session on nonfiction picture books.

And Wonder:
The rousing final keynote was delivered by Sara Pennypacker, who reminded us to surround ourselves with people who respond to the world with positive acts of creation.

And that, truly, was the magic of attending this conference. It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many fellow creators; each one passionate about making the books that will shape the hearts, minds, and lives of children. I have followed the SCBWI conference blogs for years, enjoying the wealth of information, but being there in person was immensely inspirational and encouraging.

I’m grateful to Shutta Crum, for her generosity in providing the scholarship to the conference, and to the SCBWI-MI team, for the additional financial support. Thank you!

Andrea LeGore Donahoe lives in Petoskey, MI, with her husband, two children, a bouncy standard poodle, and far too many stacks of books. Find her at @allegore and www.allegore.com.

Shutta's scholarship to the annual NY conference is one of many SCBWI-MI opportunities. The Written Critique Program is well underway and the deadline is fast approaching. Four editors still have a handful of spots open - 

Alex Arnold

Alison S. Weiss

Kelly Barrales-Saylor

Nikki Garcia 

Don't miss this amazing opportunity to get written feedback on your manuscript, whether it be a picture book, MG or YA; fiction or non-fiction. For more information on all four editors and how to submit, click here.

But wait, there's more! Save the date for the SCBWI-MI Marketing Bootcamp in East Lansing, MI, April 29, 2017.

Coming up on the Mitten Blog: Joan Donaldson writes about winning a Jane Yolan Midlist Author Honor, we have interviews with two well-known kidlit bloggers, and we'll finish the month of March with another round of Hugs and Hurrahs! Send your good news to Patti Richards - the deadline is March 27th.

Happy creating!

Kristin Lenz