Donna Salli is Finnish-American, on both sides of a large extended family. She was born and raised in Michigan along the shores of Lake Superior, and like the characters in her novel, A Notion of Pelicans, she has a fascination for the big lake.
Her family also lived, when she was in first grade, with her paternal grandparents on their northern Wisconsin dairy farm. The house had a single water faucet in the kitchen that delivered icy cold water from the well—there was no hot water, no toilet or bath, no central heat. Ironically, in that primitive house, she was given a deep love for the life of the mind and the written word. Every night as her mother tucked Donna and her younger brother into bed, she read poetry and stories to them.
Donna writes in multiple genres—poetry, fiction, drama, and the essay. Her creative work focuses on family, heritage, spirituality, changing gender roles, and other social issues.
For more information about her education, publications, and interests, click here.
Latest Blog Posts
What Is It, about Birds?
There’s an idea that things come in threes: unfortunate happenings, maybe, or if you’re spiritually inclined, messages from the divine. I’ve had three startling encounters with birds—starting with a flock of pelicans many years ago, and now suddenly, after a very long lull, two encounters in the last few months that rather shook me. I’ve been asking myself, What is it, about birds? I can’t dismiss the thought that they’re saying to me that there’s something I should be doing, besides wondering.
Brother’s Keeper
I’m the firstborn in my family. In this sweet photo, taken at our grandparents’ farm, I’m with my little brother, Robbie. Our grandmother, whom we called Mummu, did the milking—you can see the milk can she’d left to drain, leaning against the house. Our mother liked to tell a story. Robbie didn’t begin to talk as early as most children do. He’d make grunting sounds, in the rhythms and tone of a request. Mom would say, “What do you need, Robbie?” and I would jump in, translating. “He wants a cookie.” Or “He needs a drink of water.” Robbie didn’t have to talk, and he didn’t need to “do.” I saw myself as my brother’s keeper, and I would jump in and help. I had what seems to me, even now, a natural impulse to care for him. The older I’ve gotten, the more complicated that idea has become. Rob and I developed very different adult perspectives and beliefs, leaving me to wonder if I’m still my brother’s keeper.
The Ways of Mice: A Holiday Story
Do you sense at times that there are celestial powers watching over you? Have you felt at other times that loved ones who’ve crossed over still move invisibly around you? I’ve felt those things and wondered about them in my writing. I no doubt will again. But not today. After the recent scary hurricane season, the interminably long and divisive election, I’m in need of an infusion of lightheartedness. I expect you are, too. So today, at the start of this holiday season, and in the spirit of the poet Robert Burns and his ode “To a Mouse” (which he opened with the epigraph, “On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785”), I am going to tell a story of the ways of mice. It’s a reminder that we humans ought not to act as if we are the be-all and end-all—a reminder to take other creatures into account as we make decisions that impact the earth.
A Notion of Pelicans – by Donna Salli
On a windblown bluff above Lake Superior sits a fieldstone church. Founded one hundred years ago after a puzzling encounter with a flock of pelicans left Lavinia with a curious notion, Pelican Church still draws inquisitive souls to its pews with the legend that one solitary bird still circles overhead, watching.
These people have notions of their own — a pastor’s wife wants a honeymoon, a professor has harebrained ideas, a business owner is in everyone’s face, a young actress can do or be anything onstage yet struggles with every real-life decision — and their stories, tucked away for years, unfold and glide onto the pages of Donna Salli’s intimate debut novel.
The people of Pelican Church are oh-so-human and expose their mix of shifting hopes and obsessions, protected infidelities, and notions gone awry as one October day swings from sunup to sundown under the watchful gaze of a single pelican.
