Born in Northern Ireland, she was the sixth child of an Irish Methodist minister, the Rev.
[1] She had three sons, Rory, of San Francisco, Tim, of Pemberton, New Jersey, and Rodney, of Peachtree City, Georgia; five grandchildren; and three sisters, Gwen Murphy, Hilda Greene Perkins and Ailsa Muldoon.
She died on March 7, 1997, at her Mount Holly Township home from congestive heart failure caused by amyloidosis, a form of protein aggregation.
Her final book, Woman in a Special House, a collection of 18 short stories, was published just one month before her death by Fithian Press.
Her poetry went from haiku—a short Japanese verse form—to book-length poems, including "Hakugai," which "gives voice" to the 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned in prison camps during World War II, according to a 1984 review.
It said, "Through dramatic monologues, snatches of conversation and journal notes, the prisoners lost words are heard again.
'[citation needed] Poet Karen Swenson, winner of the 1993 National Poetry Series award, recalled that Mrs. Little's works stood out because of their "unusual clarity and precision of form... and were full of wonderful imagery.