To Reclaim, Restore, and Redefine: A Review, and Interview with Minato Sketches author Sharon White by John David Morgan
Debut novelist Sharon White is the author of Minato Sketches, winner of the 2023 Rosemary Daniello Prize. The book, in which Gigi, an American art historian recovering from a stroke, spends the summer teaching art history at a university in Tokyo, was released in January 2025 by Minerva Rising Press.
The story opens with Gigi arriving in Japan: “As she came down out of the clouds, Gigi saw shiny fields, wet with a sheen of green water and the spiky hills she remembered. The villages were tucked into the crevices between the islands of trees and rocks and fields.”
The novel is filled with such beautiful figurative language: “She’d left two grown boys and a husband in a country far away. Everything was alive around her. She wanted a resurrection. She knew it was blasphemous to want so much. She wanted to be struck anew with life.”
Minato is a special ward of Tokyo, formed in 1947 as a merger of Akasaka, Azabu, and Shiba wards following Tokyo City’s transformation into Tokyo Metropolis. The Japanese word Minato derives its meaning from the word “harbor.” And that is exactly what Minato is for Gigi. A safe harbor, a place where she can return to doing something she loves: teaching, while further pushing the boundaries of her stroke recovery.
Pushing those boundaries includes walking with her friend from the university named Motoko, and passing a tomb surrounded by a moat where Princess Yamatototohimomosohime was buried. It also includes searching for wild boars in the exclusion zone of the Fukushima Disaster with a fellow teacher Richard, who abandoned his family years ago to remain in Japan.
Two questions that emerge for the reader, are, first, how far will Gigi’s “friendship” with Richard go? And will Gigi follow in Richard’s footsteps, and leave her family behind, to continue her new life in Japan, after the summer is over?
Before publishing Minato Sketches, White authored several poetry and creative non-fiction books, including Bone House, Field Notes: A Geography of Mourning, Eve and Her Apple, Finding Nature in Philadelphia, winner of the AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction, Boiling: On Voyage, which won the 2010 University of Louisville Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction, and the Body Is Burdue and Delight. Her website enumerates thirty-two honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1970-1980), multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, and a 2024 Artist Residency in Warepuck, Kerikeri, New Zealand. An Associate Professor Emerita at Temple University, she has devoted her career to education and writing. Her work has been published in various literary journals and anthologies. An avid traveler, she draws inspiration from the landscapes and cultures she explores, weaving themes of place, nature, and memory into her writing.
I was fortunate to connect recently with White. The following is a transcript of our conversation, edited and condensed for length and clarity.
What led you to be a writer, and when did you decide that’s what you wanted to do?
SW: I wanted to be a writer since I was a little kid. But I have no idea why I wanted to do that. I was in fourth grade, I was so excited because the teacher read a piece I had written, I think it was Attila the Hun or something like that. A Catholic girls’ school, and the teacher read my work aloud. It was so exciting to hear my words read out loud. I have always wanted to write.
Are there other writers in your family, and does your family support your writing?
SW: I didn’t come from a family of writers. My family, when I was growing up, were mostly businesspeople. My mother went to school at the University of Connecticut and majored in business, but she always loved English. Growing up, my teachers encouraged me. They would say, “you can write, go ahead, be a writer.”
George Chambers was my favorite teacher of all in college, and then later, at the Goddard MFA program. He would take a look at what I’d written, and say, “this is great, keep on going.”
My husband Scott, and my son Graham, very much support my writing. Minato Sketches is dedicated to Graham.
Can you describe your writing process? Are you an outliner, or a discovery writer, someone who has an idea, but doesn’t know exactly what they are going to write.
SW: I am a discovery writer. I will get an idea, and then I will start writing. I write in several different forms, including poetry and non-fiction.
Is there a certain time of day you like to write?
SW: It has changed. When I was younger, before I had Graham, I made sure I wrote every day. But, when you have kids, that changes. After I had Graham, I started writing in longhand, and then I would type the work up. When he was little especially. Sitting at the playground with him, scribbling in my books.
Right now, I’m writing a book about the artist Anna Caselberg of New Zealand. But I’ve gotten a bit off track with that. I had two novels that I had written that were accepted at about the same time. Minato Sketches was published in January, and a mystery, If the Owl Calls, will be coming out in November. But my process now is back to working on the Anna Caselberg book every day.
What is your favorite part of being a writer?
SW: I think that for me, it’s the adventure. The adventure of writing. A lot of my projects have taken me to interesting places. For example, the Shetland islands. I have done quite a few writing residencies.
I really like that. The adventure of writing.
SW: Writing it part of who I am; it has made my life more interesting.
What are a few of your favorite books?
SW: I always forget that people are going to ask me that! I love Yasunari Kawabata book, a collection of very short stories, called Palm of the Hand. I really love that book.
Books that I really enjoyed recently include Rachel Cusk. Her most recent novel Parade inspired me when I was writing Minato Sketches. I didn’t want it to be too structured, and I wanted it to flow in a certain way.
You mentioned Matrix by Lauran Groff, in Minato Sketches. Lauren was picked early on by University of Louisville Professor Paul Griner to be an Axton Writer in Residence.
SW: She’s a really great writer.
Minato Sketches is a post-COVID novel. How did COVID affect your writing in general, or maybe Minato specifically?
SW: When I started to write it, I wrote about forty pages when Scott and I were in Japan. It was in 2017, during the first Trump presidency. The book is set ten years after the March 11, 2011, 9.0 magnitude Fukushima earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I had to make the setting to be sometime after 2022, post-COVID.
In your non-fiction piece, “Self Portrait” in Miracle Monocle Issue 23, you talked about your cancer. How did that cancer experience help you in writing Gigi, who had a stroke? Are there things you experienced that made their way into Minato Sketches?
SW: The character Gigi is not about me. The character was inspired by a woman I saw when I was with my family at a cross-country skiing area in Vermont. I saw this peaceful-looking woman, sitting at a dining room table with what seemed like her family. Two grown sons, and her husband, or at least her partner. She had a little white dog with her. Because my mother had had a stroke, I guessed the woman I was looking at had had a stroke. She wasn’t talking. She was completely quiet. Her family would bring things to her. She looked at me. And I thought, I really want to write her story. That’s how it started.
And then when I was in Japan, I was inspired by the light. Every morning, I would get up and write this story. I was there for four months, in the summer. It was hot. A lot of the details of seeing that woman in the Inn in Vermont, I transported to Gigi.
Can you describe the publishing process for Minato Sketches?
SW: I had sent it to several publishers. It won the Rosemary Daniello Prize, from Minerva Rising Press. Part of the prize was that they would publish the book.
Is Minato Sketches about Gigi reclaiming, restoring, or redefining her life?
SW: I think all three of those are applicable. Absolutely.
I thought the format was almost epistolary. To me, the short chapters are like vignettes. Am I on the right track?
SW: Yes. It has that rhythm.
Any advice for new writers?
SW: Have confidence about your own work. Find your voice and write to that voice. I know it’s very hard to do that. It is very frustrating sometimes as a writer. People will tell you they won’t be able to sell your work. I’ve had people tell me, my work is not commercial enough.
How do you response to something like that?
SW: It’s interesting. I was working with an agent who retired. She knew I was writing Minato Sketches. She kept saying, “pay attention to the plot.” I took her advice. I actually have a plot in Minato Sketches. Whereas I may not have paid enough attention to the plot without that advice. It makes sense to listen to advisors.
Speaking of plot … I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it involves a Shinto Priest, and Gigi’s friend Motoko. What can you tell me about the ending?
SW: I liked the idea that Gigi was independent. She was hiking with Motoko. There she was. She felt strong. But she’s on a mountain, and not in the airport. What does that mean?
Is there a possibility of her staying in Japan?
SW: I think there is that possibility, that’s she’s become this different person. Part of her re-defining.
I suppose people will have to read the book and make up their own minds.
SW: Yes, they will. I like the idea that the ending is open ended.
We already touched on this, but what are you working on, or publishing next?
SW:If the Owl Calls, coming out in November. Following that, a biography about the New Zealand artist Anna Caselberg. After I retired, my husband taught in New Zealand. I was an artist in residence there. In the house of Ann Castleberg. I became interested in her work. She is an amazing painter. We went back to New Zealand last spring.
Last question. In this interview, or in any of your earlier interviews, has there been anything that you haven’t been asked, that you’d like to talk about?
SW: I can’t think of anything. This was fun.
Thank you. And good luck with If the Owl Calls, and the Anna Caselberg biography.
There are so many wonderful sketches in Minato Sketches that it's hard to pick a favorite. One that is especially memorable is at the end of chapter seventeen: “She reads in the news that pigeons have been arrested for carrying little backpacks with pills sewn into the fabric. The backpacks are miniature and fashioned to look like their feathers. The pigeons don’t know they’re drug mules. They just love to fly."
Indeed