There are two basic plots in literature, the late John Gardner once suggested – somebody goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. In two new novels, authors Sharon White and Janice Deal subvert that formula; the recently arrived stranger ends up journeying – on foot – in the place she doesn’t quite yet belong. In Deal’s The Blue Door, Flo’s impetus is a search for a lost dog in a desert town. In White’s Minato Sketches, Gigi, recovering from a stroke, wanders through gardens and preserves of Japan before embarking on an obsessive search for wild boars in the Fukushima exclusion zone. Both women are propelled by loss and grief and seek renewal, however elusive. 

For the fifth instalment of Walking America we welcome these two authors in a conversation about writing and walking with American authors, and the first to focus entirely on walking in fiction. The Blue Door is the second book in a just announced walking-focused series, WalkAbout Books, from the publisher New Door Books. The first book is Ways of Walking, which featured Sharon White’s essay “Walking (Variations on Thoreau).”

Please join us for what promises to be a lively reading and discussion. 

Walking America is a quarterly series of conversations that brings together American writers whose books share common themes. Ann de Forest, writer and editor of the anthology Ways of Walking(New Door Books, 2022), hosts and moderates the lively exchange, which touches on, among other topics, walking as a mode of research, walking as creative act, the challenges of writing about walking, as well as of walking to write. Audience questions and participation are encouraged!