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EXTINCTION CAPITAL OF THE WORLD: Mariah Rigg
Literary Arts welcomes Mariah Rigg to celebrate her debut collection of short stories, Extinction Capital of the World.
Mariah will be in conversation with Margaret Malone.
About the book
Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai’i—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.In ten vibrant, affecting stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawai’i. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, longing, and grief are fierce dispatches from a state haunted by the specter of colonization, a precious biome under constant threat.
An older man grapples with the American-weapons research conducted on a neighboring island that reverberates through his entire life. A pregnant woman seeks belonging while poaching flowers in the rainforest with her partner’s mother. Two teenage girls find love during a summer spent on Midway Atoll. A young woman returns home to O’ahu following a breakup and reconnects with her estranged father and the island itself.
Linked by both place and character, Rigg’s stories illuminate the exotification and commodification of Hawai’i in the American mythos. Extinction Capital of the World is an environmental love letter to the Hawaiian Islands and an indelible portrayal of the people who inhabit them—marking the arrival of an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.
Mariah Rigg
Mariah Rigg is a Samoan-Haole who was born and raised on the island of O‘ahu. She is the author of the short story collection Extinction Capital of the World (Ecco, 2025). Her chapbook, All Hat, No Cattle, was published by Bull City Press in 2023. Mariah has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Mount, Carolyn Moore Writers' House, and Lambda Literary. Her work is featured in The Sewanee Review, Oxford American, Electric Lit, The Common, Joyland, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Margaret Malone
Margaret Malone is the host of PAM CUT’s Movie Book Club, the literary radio show Bust the Canon on xray.fm, and author of the story collection People Like You, a Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction & Winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize, and selected by Powell’s as one of the Northwest’s “25 Books to Read Before You Die."
Margaret lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children, where she mentors established and emerging writers of all genres on their individual projects in person and online. Reach out sometime to say hello at margaretmalone.com. The recipient of grants, fellowships, and residencies from MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, Ford Family Foundation, Sitka Center, Literary Arts and others, she’s been working hard lately at being more flinty and unreasonable in daily life. She’s also in the death throes of completing a novel.
