Kate Woodworth in Person

Join us on Tuesday, September 9 at 7 PM as Kate Woodworth talks about her new novel, Little Great Island. She will be in conversation with Rebekah Cornell and Olivia Aguilar.

On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love

After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up--a place she swore she'd never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island's summer residents, now back himself to sell his family's summer home. Mari and Harry's lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island...from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies.

Little Great Island Illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love.

Kate Woodworth is the author of the novel Racing Into the Dark (EP Dutton, 1989), hailed as “A compelling exploration of mental illness” by Booklist and as an “auspicious debut” by Publishers Weekly. 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.

Rebekah Cornell is the Conservation Administrator/Planner and Tree Warden for the town of South Hadley. She has a dual masters degree in Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and a BS in Environmental Design with a concentration in Horticulture. Much of her undergraduate work focused on street trees and community forestry. A childhood in the White Mountains of northern NH engrained her with a love and respect for the environment and our natural resources. Seeing forest and farmland turn into development made her want to be a positive part of planning the built environment – there must be a balance between what we take and what we give to the world around us. She worked for ten years as a private gardener before joining town government work. Locally, she works with the Conservation Commission and property owners on development that not only protects but enhances the environment. Through Growing Wild South Hadley, she works with volunteers to encourage residents to plant native trees, shrubs, and perennial pollinator plants to help support biodiversity and climate resilience at a local level. She believes that with patience, guidance, and care we can all make a positive difference in the natural world around us.

Olivia Aguilar (she/her) is the Leslie and Sarah Miller Director of the Miller Worley Center for the Environment and an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Mount Holyoke College. Working with all factions of the college, she helps develop programming, curriculum and strategic planning on issues related to the environment, sustainability and climate justice. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of community, race and transformative learning in environmental education. Specifically, she examines how and why environmental and science learning communities are exclusive and how they can be more inclusive of groups historically marginalized. Her upcoming book, Remember, Resisting and Reimaging: A Latinx Outdoor Experience examines outdoor experiences from a Latinx perspective through the use of cuentos (stories) to help reimagine what it means to be “outdoors”.

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