Conversation with Michael Welch

 

In your introduction, you write "There is an intimacy to living with the Great Lakes. It’s a type of love to step into their waters and have your breath taken away." It's clear that curating this book was a labor of love. Tell me about your drive to do so. 

I really became interested in writing about the Great Lakes after reading Dan Egan’s incredible book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. Since then, I've loved writing that features the lakes, but while there are a ton of great books about individual lakes and communities alongside them, I struggled to find books that bring authors together across the entire region. We view the Great Lakes as separate bodies of water, but they all flow into one another; they’re a giant, unified, awe-inspiring natural wonder. I was really interested in creating a book that identified the connections between people living alongside the lakes to tell our larger, shared story. This anthology features writers in densely populated cities like Chicago and rural communities in Caro, Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, as well as places as distant as Duluth and Buffalo and beyond. I wanted to try to draw the through line between us through our connection to the lakes.

Also, I realize that every region has their defining traits. Everyone in the Rocky Mountains can see the peaks in the distance and immediately know where they’re headed. Here, we have the Great Lakes, but it’s not always visible. Since I was a kid, I could feel the pull of the lake beyond the horizon in the east and knew it would lead me home. I think there’s an intimacy and poeticism to that, and I figured other writers would feel the same. And in reading all the beautiful work that appears in this anthology, I realized I was correct in that assumption.

 

The anthology is divided into three sections: "Boundaries & Boundlessness," "Wreck & Renewal," and "Futures, Unmoored & Undetermined." How did you come to this scaffolding? What does it convey about the Great Lakes and this book?

I was going back and forth about some potential ways to scaffold the book as I came into the project, but it really came together when I started sending out acceptances and seeing everyone’s stories and the ways in which each author was in dialogue with one another. I wanted to find a way to organize the anthology that spoke to the past, present, and future of the Great Lakes region. I also wanted a flow to the book where stories could move from deeply personal to grand in scope and back again. I kept thinking “what is the story of the lakes and where do we find our place in it?”

“Boundaries & Boundlessness” explores our intimate relationship with our lakes and the ways it transcends traditional boundaries like national borders, language, and internal and external factors that would otherwise keep us from realizing our true identities. “Wreck & Renewal” expands the story a bit to interrogate our long history of altering the lakes—sometimes for good but oftentimes for the worse—and moves from this deeply personal connection to the question of how we learn to live in harmony with our environment. Finally, “Futures, Unmoored & Undetermined” highlights the precarious future of the lakes with all the various threats we face, most notably climate change. There’s a great essay from Sara Maurer toward the end of the book that I think encapsulates the message of that section well—she writes about watching the winters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan continue to grow warmer throughout her life and wondering what it means for her home, her community, and their collective identity if that trend continues. What does it mean to be a Yooper without the winters that define their home?

In total, I wanted the anthology to move like this: Why are we drawn to the lakes, how have we changed one another, and what is our responsibility to these wonders we call our home in the face of an uncertain future?

 

Tell me about the curation process for this book. How did you find its writers?

To be honest, I was a little nervous about the curation process because I knew I was going to try to capture such a vast number of miles and find authors from places I’ve never personally traveled to. So, I started with what I knew. I reached out to some authors who I was confident would have insightful thoughts on the subject, and got some really beautiful work from them. Gabriel Bump and I had talked about our love of Lake Michigan before, and I laughed when I saw that we both ended up writing about awe. RS Deeren writes so beautifully about growing up in a rural community in the Thumb of Michigan that I knew he needed to be involved. And I remember reading Kathleen Rooney’s piece in Chicago Magazine and loving it, so I was convinced I had to try to get it for the anthology. 

From there, I tried to cast the net as wide as possible with the goal of capturing the diversity of this region. I wanted to find different experiences, authors from cities and rural communities, stories from Native Americans who called this land home first, and stories told in new and unique ways. The response to the call was incredible and really opened up the project (and led to many difficult decisions). Originally my editor and I considered sticking to the American side of the lakes, but with the submissions we received, I realized we needed to tell the story of how the lakes are shared and the “boundaries” between the United States and Canada fall away in the face of these wonders. Some states were easier to curate than others (Michigan writers really showed out, but I remember screaming on social media for more Indiana writers). But all in all, it was such a joy to see the portrait of the lakes and this anthology shape itself in real time as I poured over this treasure trove of stunning writing. 

 

If someone else were the editor, and you were to contribute an essay or poem for this very collection, what would be at its heart? In which section would it live, and what would you call it?

Honestly this anthology was such a blessing to my creativity because it pushed me to start writing more about my relationship to Lake Michigan (currently in a fiction project, but I should try out an essay!). I’m a fourth generation Chicagoan and I’m really loud about it, both in person and in my writing. I think I’d write about the city and the lake’s intertwined, push-and-pull relationship. Chicago and its culture is built on audaciousness and ingenuity, and we see that in the way it grew alongside the lake. We’re a people that raised our city building by building eight feet higher out of the muck and reversed the flow of the Chicago River away from the lake in order to grow better alongside its shores. In many ways it was so deeply implausible that Chicago would become what it is today, but through the Great Fire and the power of the lake we developed this collective mindset that no problem couldn’t be solved. Of course, we haven’t always lived up to that promise, but we have the capacity to get there. Growing into our own alongside Lake Michigan taught us that. I’d love to connect that history and relationship to how I grew to know myself as a writer, a Chicagoan, and a person. I feel like that could be a good fit for “Wreck & Renewal.” And the title? I’d probably steal some words from the mastermind behind Chicago’s World Fair, Daniel Burnham, and call it "Make No Little Plans."

 

What's your favorite thing that you learned from a contributor's piece? What most surprised you?

Wow, so many things! Staci Lola Drouillard taught me about the Ojibwe process of harvesting manoomin (wild rice) and the preciousness of every grain. Laura Marris took me to Little Bloody Run and explained the long history of Western New York’s industrial scars. I learned so much more about zebra mussels and their takeover of Lake Erie from Jessica Leigh Hester, and it’s tied closely to a heart-wrenching story about her long-term illness and coming to better understand her own body. I think my favorite thing about this anthology is how unique and wide-ranging each story is. It’s a collection of authors who have very different experiences, live miles and miles away from one another—including across international borders—and who may never actually meet one another in person. But despite the differences, they’re all connected by their love and awe of something larger than themselves.