Mariah Rigg is a Samoan-Haole writer who was born and raised on the island of O‘ahu.

Her short story collection EXTINCTION CAPITAL OF THE WORLD (Ecco, 2025), was named the winner of the 2026 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature, winner of the 2026 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award, and a best book of 2025 by Esquire, Electric Lit, Debutiful, and Chicago Review of Books. Her hybrid creative nonfiction chapbook, ALL HAT, NO CATTLE was published by Bull City Press in 2023.

Mariah is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Mount, Oregon Literary Arts, Publishing Triangle, Carolyn Moore Writers’ House, and Lambda Literary. Her poetry and prose has been featured in The Sewanee Review, Oxford American, Electric Lit, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Currently, she teaches creative writing in Western Mass.