What:
Little Great Island tells the story of a small Maine island community needing to reinvent itself in the face of climate change. Told from the point of view of a handful of community members, the story focuses on Harry Richardson, a recent widower and a long-time summer visitor, who wants to sell his family home so he can escape painful memories. Island-born Mari McGavin, on the other hand, has just fled to Little Great Island after offending the pastor of a powerful cult. She wants to farm Harry’s land but lacks the money to buy it. The island’s other inhabitants have ideas of their own about what should happen to Harry’s property, and as the conflicting visions of the island’s future take hold, the fragile balance between the island’s native population and summer visitors fractures as everyone fights for their own view of the future. Only when tragedy strikes can the community reunite and find a way forward.
That’s the “what” in terms of plot, and I hope readers will enjoy it, but I also hope that readers will find that my book is a love song to humanity, with all our strengths and flaws, and to the natural world, which is filled with such breathtaking and threatened beauty. The title is intended to convey that “little” and “great” aren’t contradictory – even small acts can have significant consequences; even small places are important. It’s also meant to evoke John Donne’s famous “no man is an island” Devotion, which reads, “no man is an island, entire unto itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.”
This sentiment – that we are each part of a greater whole – is also critical to what Little Great Island is about. The effects of climate change are a part of our day-to-day lives, and it’s hard to find effective countermeasures, so how do we find hope? The answer for me is hope is in ourselves, in our communities, our connectedness, and in our compassion. Like the characters on my fictional island, we are smart. We are resourceful. We are capable of deep empathy. If we work together to find compromises, we can avert disaster.
Why:
Two forces came together to lead to the writing of Little Great Island. When I started writing, I had recently finished my MFA and begun taking workshops about structure from various writing centers. My rebellious side was tired of deconstructed fiction – story arcs, turning points, obstacles, internal/external goals, foils and antagonists. I just wanted to have fun writing. Fun, for me, is rooted in language and character, and so I began writing vignettes about different characters who all lived on an island off the coast of Maine. I didn’t think about what I’d learned about writing fiction. I just wrote.
Simultaneously, I decided it was time for me to stop wandering around complaining about how “no one” was doing anything about climate change and do something. Since the something I enjoy doing is writing, I decided to write an article for our local paper about what changes people had noticed in their environment over their lifetimes. The topic had come up in casual conversation – lilacs were blooming two weeks earlier than they used to; the monarch butterflies had disappeared – but the people I asked replied that nothing had changed. I was upset about what I perceived as denial and so took cover from the real world in fiction. I decided I would take that language-driven mashup of characters I’d been playing with and force them to confront the reality of climate change.
How:
Little Great Island has eleven points of view – twelve counting the omniscient sections, which represent the island’s point of view. I liken weaving those points of view into a narrative that flows seamlessly for the reader to playing 3D chess in the dark…and I don’t even know how to play chess. I had to make peace with arcs, obstacles and plot points and map everything out on a piece of foamcore using the smallest Post-its I could find. Each point of view got its own color code and, eventually, a number indicating where in the novel it would fall. Thanks to one of my early readers, I recognized the book needed focus and so decided Harry and Mari would carry the bulk of the narrative. From there, I was able to condense the Post-its on my foam core to three arcs – Harry’s, Mari’s, and the island’s, which I conceptualized as encompassing all points of view other than Harry’s and Mari’s. I tried to trim each of those points of view to two-to-three pages.
Next I had to ensure that these “island” sections were evenly distributed throughout the book, that they moved the plot forward, and that they were short enough not to distract. By then I felt as though I was tinkering with the tiny pieces on the inside of a watch: counting pages to ensure Harry and Mari got equal time, eliminating word repetitions, and linking one section to the next – particularly in the beginning of the book, where my readers were learning how the story would be told. For example, Harry’s first section ends with him on the ferry to the island heading toward his car. Mari is on the same ferry, and her section begins with her hearing the ferry’s car ramp lowered onto the island’s pier.
Sound complicated? It was. I have a note in the corner of my foam core that reads, “You Can Do It.” I didn’t always believe it, but I kept trying.
Bio:
Kate Woodworth is the award-winning author of the novel Racing into the Dark. Her short stories have appeared in Cimarron Review, Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah and other literary journals. A retired medical writer in addition to fiction writer, she has received numerous awards and recognition for her writing, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, multiple Utah Arts Council and Dalton Pen Communication Awards, and an International Association of Business Communicators finalist recognition. She received her MFA from Boston University. A passionate lover of the natural world, Kate is the author of essays on the impact of climate change on fishing and farming that have been published by the Climate Fiction Writers League and on her Substack, “Food Curious.” Her forthcoming novel, Little Great Island (Sibylline Press, May 6, 2025) has been called “an extraordinary achievement and a pure pleasure to read” by National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ha Jin. Kate received her MFA from Boston University.
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Thank you for visiting.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist
Books: In the Context of Love | Gordy and the Ghost Crab | Sleepwalker
New novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, coming fall 2026 from Regal House Publishing
Connect with Linda on social media: LinkTree
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