Guest post by Kate Woodworth
I began worrying about global warming when I first saw Al Gore’s documentary, “Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. For the next decade or so, I spent a lot of time grousing about how nobody was doing anything to address the problems he’d pointed out.
Then I got slapped by another inconvenient truth: I wasn’t doing anything either.
At that time, I was writing scenes and character sketches with vague thoughts of turning them into a novel. I wasn’t thinking about global warming as I wrote. I’d never heard the term “climate fiction.” But when I recognized that I couldn’t complain about the inertia of others if I was doing nothing to fix the climate, I decided to mesh my vignettes with my climate concern, and so Little Great Island—my new novel about love, community, and climate change on an island off the coast of Maine—was born. Once aware of the existence of climate fiction, I dug in to see what other climate writers were doing.
Climate change affects all of us—young and old and across the globe—and so its no surprise that there’s climate fiction from different countries and for a wide variety of reading tastes. Some authors focused on the social and environmental repercussion of climate change—Bill McKibben, Richard Powers, Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver, Lydia Millet—spring immediately to mind, but the list is expanding as the need for action grows. Here’s a sampling of ten great reads that reflects that diversity and urgency.
2025: Little Great Island by Kate Woodworth
Mari swore she’d never return to her small hometown on an island off the coast of Maine, but after offending a powerful cult pastor, she and her six-year-old son are on the run to the one safe place she knows. While there, she runs into an old friend, Harry, who is visiting to sell his parent’s old house. Their lives become intertwined, shifting their lives as much as a change in climate affects an entire ecosystem. Both will have lasting effects on generations of people, animals, and life, living on the island.
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2025: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
On a subantarctic island being destroyed by climate change in the present day/near future, a father, three children, and a woman washed ashore after a shipwreck and must learn love and trust as they struggle to survive. The setting of this page-turner—modeled on World Heritage Site Macquarie Island—is unforgettable for its abundance of birds and animals and for its punishing storms.
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2024: Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen
This deeply affecting story follows a mother of three young children searching for a safety and normalcy in a near-future world that no longer offers either. For months, Cass manages to evade fire, drought, food shortages, and violence only to discover the dangers inherent in her own understanding of her fellow humans.
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2023: Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin; illustrated by Giovanni Rigano
In the Bay of Bengal, a young boy steals away from his fishing village home in search of his dead mother’s lucky knife. In a village inside the Arctic Circle, a young girl plays hooky to travel into the wilderness, hoping to learn more about grizzly/polar bear hybrids known as grolars. In these interwoven stories—set in the present day/near future—both protagonists are challenged by the effects of climate change that are the backdrop of their increasingly difficult lives.
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2022: The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Kirby and Frida know Florida is in trouble from climate change, but day-to-day concerns and the confidence of having survived previous hurricanes leave them unprepared for a catastrophic storm. In the midst of one storm, the couples two sons disappear, and Frida gives birth to Wanda, who then grows up in a Florida that is quickly losing its battle with climate change. The rest of the world fares no better, yet despite the death and destruction, the lasting impression is of a world where nature is renewed, and people learn what’s truly of value.
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2021: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
The death and destruction caused in a fictional African village by an American oil company is the subject of this deeply moving novel that covers recent history through present day. Pexton Oil has been drilling for years. Children are dying. The river is polluted. The soil is contaminated. Crops wont grow. The village madman is the one who finally acts, triggering a chain of events that changes everything about the life the people of the village knew.
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2020: A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
After a storm of Biblical proportions hits during a multi-family summer vacation, the children flee, leaving the parents to worry about their dwindling liquor supplies and the possibility of losing their security deposit. Religious allusions continue as the younger generation is left trying to endure in the mess left by their elders. What lingers for readers is the tenderness between teenage protagonist Evie and her little brother, Jack, and the understanding that all of us must do better today to ensure a future for our children and grandchildren.
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2019: Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Interconnected stories stitch the past to the future in Thailand’s capital city while showing the mounting threat of increased rainfall and rising sea levels on a city only five feet above sea level. Dr. Phineas Stevens, a 19th century missionary, builds a life in Bangkok after initially finding the city inhospitable. Sammy, a Thai native, flits from country to country and relationship to relationship while Nee, a woman he once dated, teaches swimming in a condominium building erected where Sammy’s house once stood. Mai, who grew up in the condominium building, comes of age in the social media era and lives long enough to see Bangkok submerged.
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2018: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
Most of the United States is underwater as the result of climate change, but the traditional homeland of the Diné in the Four Corners region has survived thanks to the protection of magical walls. Not all magic is good magic, however, and 20-year-old Maggie Hoskie—possessed by a killing superpower that must be controlled lest it turn to evil—is tasked with subduing the dark witchcraft while simultaneously healing from her own childhood damage.
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2017: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
Global warming has all but destroyed the planet and deprived white people of their ability to dream. The cure? Harvest the dreams of Indigenous North Americans, believed to be stored in their bone marrow. Frenchie, left on his own after his older brother is taken by the marrow thieves, finds a new family in Canada with a group of Indians from different nations. With them, he becomes a man while learning the truth of his world and his heritage.
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2016: Barkskins by Annie Proulx
In 1693, when forests were everywhere in North America, two penniless young Frenchmen arrive in Canada to make a life for themselves by cutting down trees. Over the ensuing centuries, their descendants continue to ravage the planets resources until, in current times, they are forced to confront all that is irredeemably lost.
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2015: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The American West is choking in dust storms while speculators, developers, lawyers, and their hired guns wheel, deal and murder for rights to the water in the dwindling Colorado River. No one can be trusted as everyone vies for their own survival and, in the midst of it all, an intrepid journalist struggles to hold on to her own sense of right and wrong.
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About the Author
Kate Woodworth is the award-winning author of Racing into the Dark, which has been celebrated by publications such as Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Additionally, her short stories have appeared in an array of literary journals, including Cimarron Review, Western Humanities Review, and Shenandoah. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee as well as the recipient of multiple Utah Arts Council and Dalton Pen Communications awards. In conjunction with the publication of Little Great Island, Woodworth has started the “Be the Butterfly” initiative, which encourages its participants to engage in small, meaningful ways of mitigating the effects of climate change. For more, visit katewoodworth.com.
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