Little Great Island: A Timely Tale of Climate, Connection, and Healing

Kate Woodworth's second novel "Little Great Island" weaves climate change into an intimate narrative without resorting to dystopian tropes or post-apocalyptic landscapes. Set on a fictionalized island, the story follows Harry, grappling with personal grief, and Mari, an islander with her own complicated past. Through these two characters—one a "summer person," one a year-round resident—Woodworth explores the complex socioeconomic dynamics of island life against the backdrop of our escalating climate crisis.

The island itself emerges as a character and commands the reader's attention with equal force. Her meticulous research shines through in authentic details about sustainable farming, lobster biology, and the nuanced dynamics of island communities. I hugely enjoy the way she uses the disappearance of lobsters—creatures that transformed from "poor man's dinner" to luxury food in the mid-to-late 19th century—as a poignant metaphor for environmental change.

One thing that distinguishes this novel is Woodworth's refusal to create unidimensional villains. She crafts complex characters whose flaws and virtues mirror our intimate dance with the environment—sometimes graceful, sometimes stumbling, but always consequential. The evolving relationship between Harry and Mari offers no fairy-tale ending but rather a realistic portrait of how damaged people can heal one another.

With "Little Great Island," Woodworth joins the ranks of climate fiction writers who understand that hope must balance fear if we are to confront our environmental crisis. Her "Be the Butterfly" initiative extends this philosophy beyond the page, inviting readers to commit to small actions that, like her characters' choices, might create ripple effects that extend far and wide.

"Little Great Island" releases May 6 and is available for pre-order from Amazon, Bookshop, Target, and your favorite indie bookstore. Visit katewoodworth.com for more information.

You are invited to join Kate with Betsy Burton at her reading June 20th, 7pm, The King’s English bookstore. The next day she appear with other authors for a panel at Park City Public Library on, “The Generative Power of Creative Writing Communities.”

Meet Kate Woodworth

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Amanda: Your proofs are so clean! And you already have wonderful blurbs. "Ingenious narrative structure, well-textured prose." That's great.

Kate: That was so sweet of Ha Jin. Just blew me away.

Amanda: "If you love Elizabeth Strout, you'll love Little Great Island." That was another great one.

Kate: I love her writing.

The Island

Amanda: I love yours! I’m intrigued by the centrality of place in this book. How did you feel about the island? Did it take over your life?

Kate: I love that island. It took over my heart and my soul decades ago, which is really part of why I wanted to write about it.

Amanda: Would you remind me of its name?

Kate: The actual island itself is called North Haven. It's about 12 miles out to sea off the coast of Maine. There's a ferry that goes from Rockland. There are two islands out there - North Haven and Vinalhaven. Vinalhaven is bigger and tends to be better known.

Amanda: So how did you name it "Little Great Island"?

Kate: There's Little Cranberry Island and Great Cranberry Island, so I was kind of looking at that. But the other piece is when people on North Haven go to the mainland, they talk about going to "America." I really liked that concept—that this is an island, a microcosm, but it is representative of larger islands that we tend to call continents.

Climate Change and Lobsters

Amanda: You did that beautifully. And then you incorporated climate change—letting it be part of the narrative without allowing it to dominate. I loved what you did with the lobsters.

Kate: Thank you. I was trying to figure out how to tell a climate change story that wasn't post-apocalyptic or dystopian or science fiction. I wanted it to be happening right now, because it is happening right now. And I felt it couldn't just be gloom and doom—there needed to be hope. We're forced to confront the possibility of our own extinction as a species, and we're not wired to wrap our heads around that. So I thought, let's have a species extinction. I was looking at little fuzzy things because they're cute, but the list of cute, fuzzy animals that have already gone extinct is frightening. Then I thought: lobster. They're not cute or fuzzy, but everyone knows what they are, and they're iconic.

Amanda: When I think of lobsters, I think of how they used to be the poor man's dinner and now everyone wants them. You had hundreds of them born, and then they went toward deeper water. I wondered—are they going to go so far that fishermen can never find them because it's cooler down there? There was an ambiguity that had me guessing.

Kate: The life cycle of lobster is fascinating. The eggs are inseminated, but the female lobster doesn't release them until she's in a right place in her career. . . so to speak. When they're released, they're free-floating in currents, which is a great opportunity for them to get eaten. Eventually they start to navigate somewhat, and they realize they have to hide. That's when they start going down deep, and they keep going through successive molts.

Research on Farming and Cults

Amanda: You must have done a ton of research for this book. How long did it take? Any surprises?

Kate: The biggest surprise was that I had to do more research on farming. Betsy Burton [Former owner of the King’s English bookstore in Salt Lake City] was always right there saying, "I don't buy Mari as a character." She’s a farmer but I don't know anything about farming, I had to do a deep dive. Mari farms on an island, so this is small-scale, sustainable farming. Fortunately, I know some island farmers who were willing to talk to me.

For the lobster research, it was amazing how many people are interested in lobsters and have written books about them.

Amanda: Did you also research religious cults?

Kate: I did. What I was most interested in with Mari is the ways she stepped over those red flags. These people are calling each other brother and sister, there's this Pastor Aaron, and yet she's thinking, "I'm happy here. I can make a difference. Here's this really cute guy." She's doing what she wants to do, and all those flags are in her face. That's the part I wanted to investigate.

Amanda: I found your treatment of the abuse scene really powerful because it was like you were figuring it out as I was figuring it out. You had me, the reader, in the palm of your hand.

Kate: When you think about women in abusive relationships, why do they stay? Why does any woman stay in a marriage where she's not happy, not acknowledged, not supported? I was really intrigued by that question.

Amanda: What was the answer in Mari's case?

Kate: There were many answers. The biggest one is she's married to this man, and he's the father of her child. For a lot of women, they put up with things because they still love the guy, and they don't want their kid to be the child of a divorce. They keep saying, "Well, that just happened once," or "It won't happen again," or "He apologized," or "Maybe it was my fault." And it just keeps spiraling.

Amanda: Your book has some deep social messages.

Kate: I hope so. I wanted to write something real. I didn't want to have any true villains. I wanted all my characters to be multi-dimensional.

Writing

Amanda: Let's talk about your writing practice. You said it took ten years to write Little Great Island.

Kate: I tried to walk away repeatedly. It was an iterative process. I had what I've started to refer to as a "primal ooze" because there were so many characters doing so many things. I didn't intend to write a novel when I started writing this—I just wanted to play in that playground, in that language and setting.Then I realized I wanted to say something about climate change, and those two forces came together. That was my "big bang" moment. But now I had this literal primal ooze. How was I going to frame that into a story?

My breakthrough came when I thought, "I have to figure this out myself." A writer friend gave me good advice: I really had to focus and have a maximum of two characters carry the storyline. I chose Harry because I was interested in grief—both personal grief and climate grief. And I was interested in Mari—I was curious about all these ways she had stepped over her own good judgment. Plus, he's a summer person and she's an Islander, and I wanted that dynamic.

Amanda: The romantic relationship is interesting too.

Kate: On the island when I first started going there as a child, there was a very clear socioeconomic divide. My parents were not interested in letting their children date anybody who'd grown up on the island. Yet it started to happen—some well-known Boston families started moving to the island, dating people from the island, and marrying people from the island.

Initially I wanted Harry and Mari in that situation where there were still taboos, but the truth is, there aren't many anymore. To me, they both had different kinds of damage and the opportunity to heal each other, so I decided to explore that. I did not want a happily-ever-after ending. I wanted to leave it a little open-ended, but make it clear that they had healed each other and could be together or not.

Getting Published

Amanda: How has your experience been with Sibylline Press compared to your previous publisher?

Kate: Sibylline is very different from my experience with Dutton. It's a traditional press with distribution through Publishers Group West, which is the major distributor for independent bookstores, and they have what they refer to as a "cooperative marketing model," which I love.

They've taken all the books from the fall 2024 list and spring 2025 list to multiple trade shows across the country. I recently returned from a publisher's retreat in San Diego, which was a stunning experience. I got to meet and hang out with the other women who have books coming out this spring. We refer to each other as "sisters," and it's such a bonding experience to go through this together.

They trained us on everything—social media approaches, how to improve our online presence, bookstore reading techniques, body language, eye contact, and how to handle challenging questions. There was even a publicist who conducted mock radio interviews, deliberately throwing in curve ball questions so we could practice responding to unexpected situations.

We were filmed for short videos they'll use for social media, and each of us had a half-hour session with a professional film crew. That footage will be used if they get inquiries from television stations or for live broadcasts—they can show how we perform on camera. They also have a YouTube channel where all this content will be featured.

They're very much in tune with modern publicity methods that I knew nothing about. It's a completely different experience from my previous publishing experience, where I had very little communication with the publisher and almost no publicity support.

Sisters and Being the Butterfly

Amanda: Do you have another book in the works?

Kate: I'm very intrigued by returning to the two-sister dynamic I covered in my first book. I want it to be two sisters who were very close growing up, who have since been apart, and are now in their 70s and back together. They're both single and seeing each other through this last stage of life. I also want this to be a climate change piece. I have another setting in mind—Westport Harbor on the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. This one will focus more on marshes and wetlands, that barrier area between ocean and land.

Amanda: Tell me about your "Be the Butterfly" initiative.

Kate: My publisher asked that we come up with a theme for our events. I thought, "Be the Butterfly" because there's a character who is the "butterfly diplomat" in Little Great Island, referring to the butterfly effect. On my book tour, I'll be asking readers to commit to one small act or behavior change to help mitigate climate change. Nobody can do this on their own, but if you get overwhelmed and do nothing, that gets us nowhere.

We also asked climate writers to give me the name of a nonprofit focused on conservation or climate change to put in the back of the book. The response has been incredibly positive. Peter Heller, Barbara Kingsolver, Lydia Millet, Bill McKibben—these are all people focused on this issue. I wanted it to be international, so I reached out to the Climate Fiction Writers League in the UK, found a woman in Sweden who writes young adult fantasy, and connected with Pitchaya Sudbanthad who wrote "Bangkok Wakes to Rain." They've all been wonderfully supportive and collegial.

Kate Woodworth's debut novel "Little Great Island" releases May 6 and is now available for pre-order from Amazon, Bookshop, Target, and your favorite indie bookstore. Visit katewoodworth.com for more information.