— Content warning: The following article discusses natural disasters and hurricane devastation.

The year is 2026 and Juliet is a mother who has been cut off from her 16-year old son Billy after catastrophic flooding on the eastern seaboard. With Martin, her neighbor who is also separated from his family, Juliet embarks on a harrowing journey to reunite with Billy. Billy faces his own challenges as he is stuck in the family’s sinking house in Boston. He is joined by Martin’s daughters, Lana and Agnes. The three friends are forced on a precarious journey as the home slides into the currents. When cellphones malfunction, a new layer of complexity is added to the mix as Juliet and Billy struggle to communicate. The mother and son duo are the foundational characters behind “Inland,”  a 2024 summer release written by Kate Risse.

The Boston native is not just an author. She is also a professor of Spanish Language and Culture at Tufts University, with a course on Climate Justice. On Oct. 2, The Justice spoke with Risse about the inspiration for her novel, the challenges she encountered while writing it and what she hopes readers will take away from the story.

Mirabell Rowland: “When did you first become interested in creative writing?”

Kate Risse: “I studied probably what is now called ‘Comp. Lit.’ When I was in college, I was already reading a variety of books … novels mainly, and some history from really all over the world. I was interested in writing when I got out of college, and I did do a little bit of writing in college. I did some short story classes and some poetry classes. And then I was very interested in writing out of school. 

Actually, I’m looking at them on my bookshelf. I published a couple of short stories and a poem in journals. And then I worked for a short while, maybe two or three years, and then I decided to go back to graduate school and get a doctorate. I was very interested in Hispanic language and culture, so I got a Ph.D from Boston College and did not do a lot of fiction writing at that point. I’ve been teaching now for 20 years at Tufts. 

Believe it or not, I’ve belonged to a writing group for 35 years and I just came back two weeks ago from my week and a half that I spent with them on Cape Cod. So I have been involved in this writing group. It’s kind of like a community of writers. Sometimes we meet online, you know, at like six in the morning, and there’s no talking. But we can see each other on the screen, and that kind of inspires us. I do wanna say I started this novel just before Covid. And so I often think of it as a Covid novel because I spent a lot of time when we were all indoors writing the novel with the support of the writing community I’ve belonged to for so long.”

Mirabell Rowland: “Can you tell me about how you decided to merge into ecocriticism and climate justice in your writing, since that is something that you teach at Tufts.”

Kate Risse: “I had these kinds of two existential concerns, one was climate change. And also there’s a big part of this book that is actually [about] kids on social media. I made a visit to this island that my mother lives on in the Gulf coast, and it’s actually just where the hurricane was. So this has been, what they call, the hurricane corridor on the Gulf Coast, the Panhandle, the forgotten coast of Northern Florida.

So in terms of how I started writing it, I was on the island, and I don’t know if you remember, in 2018 Hurricane Michael blew through the Gulf Coast in this very area. It was ranked as the highest category. It was the first and only category five hurricane on record in the Gulf, in the Panhandle. I was there probably two months before the hurricane hit, and then I returned a couple of months after the hurricane hit. So this is a category five hurricane on the Panhandle, and I saw the aftermath of it. I saw the devastation. I saw houses there one day, and then they were literally gone. So I think my mind just sort of started churning. I really felt I wanted to write about this and so that’s when I began it. That’s how I was pushed into doing it — because of what I had seen on the Gulf coast and the power in these storms.”

Mirabell Rowland: “Writing seems to have been something that you grew up doing. Did you ever see yourself as an author when you were younger?”

Kate Risse: “That’s a great question. I think, in the school that I went to [which was] an alternative school in Brookline High School, there was a good emphasis on writing and expressing yourself. We read a lot of world literature. When I was younger I probably did think about ‘oh, wouldn’t it be neat to be a novelist?’ I don’t think I ever thought that I would do that seriously.” 

Mirabell Rowland: “What was the most challenging aspect of writing this novel?”

Kate Risse: “I would definitely say the structure. So the way it is now there are alternating chapters between Billy, the 16-year-old boy, and his mom, Juliet. But when I wrote it, it was written more like the first half was Juliet and the second half was Billy. It just really didn’t work. And so I did quite a lot of restructuring of this novel with the help of an editor, with the help of my publisher and then also a lot of help with my writing group. In fact, the woman I met [from my writing group] is this wonderful woman who’s like the muse and the sage. Her name is Sally. I remember her saying, ‘you’ve got to cut the beginning out.’

I think for writers, there is definitely a tension about how much backstory you want to have. You want to give the reader a sense that these are three dimensional people and they have lives and they have these pasts. And so you have to kind of sprinkle your novel with these kinds of details.

It’s hard to throw stuff out, you know, stuff you spend so [many] agonizing hours writing and then people come along. They say ‘you gotta get rid of that.’ You got rid of the first six pages, but you gotta do it.”

Mirabell Rowland: “I’m curious about the characters in ‘Inland.’ Were they inspired by people in your life?”

Kate Risse: “Yeah, it’s funny. I met with a bunch of people who had read the book the other day, and they were like, ‘I know that that person is this person’, and I was like ‘not really!’ The best way I can describe it is, these characters have characteristics of people I have definitely known and met in my life. You know, there are two sons in this book. You really only hear from the 16-year-old one. But there’s also an 18-year-old who’s mentioned — that’s George, the older brother.

I have two daughters, and I think some people think that I sort of modeled them after my daughters. But you know what? I think I’d have to say parts of them are almost more like my brothers. I grew up with older twin brothers. So the best thing I can say is each character is like a jigsaw puzzle with different pieces of multiple people I know.” 

Mirabell Rowland: “Why do you think this story is so relevant right now?”

Kate Risse: “I really like this question because I just wrote an article about why ... we read climate fiction. I hadn’t read much climate fiction before I wrote this, but after I published it, I read a pretty good amount of climate fiction. 

I wasn’t interested in writing dystopian apocalyptic fiction, where the world has completely come apart. I wanted people to feel the collapse happening in the here and now. I wanted it to be just a little bit beyond where we are.

Going back to this question: Why do we read this fiction? There’s many answers for it. Is it motivational? Does it make us do something to thwart and slow down the collapse? Does it help us see these fictional characters in similar situations, say, with flooding and drought and extinction and collapse and think, How are they dealing with their predicament? Is that what we’re going to do? 

But, you know, maybe this is just like any novel, and maybe [climate fiction stories] are just entertainment. The jury’s out. I’m still thinking about it. But I think it is a very interesting question.” 

Mirabell Rowland: “What was your intention with this story? What do you want people to take away from your book?”

Kate Risse: “I do want people to meditate on where we’re going. I think that intrinsically, I feel the urgency. And so I’ve put it into fiction. You know, I’m not a scientist. Maybe if I were, I would run out to a glacier and work with some scientists and try to write a paper and say, ‘look, it’s melting!’ But I’m not. I’m a humanist. And I feel the urgency. I do believe in literature and the humanities. That’s what I teach, and I believe that it can make the world better.”

Risse seamlessly weaves together elements of technology, global warming and survival in her book. As a humanist, it is no wonder her book in its essence explores our humanity. Whether on a rainy morning or quiet afternoon, if you are looking for a good page turner, you can add “Inland” to your list.