Red Emma’s

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 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, which is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins in summer 2025. Her 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, Carolyn Moore Writers’ House, and Lambda Literary. Her work has been featured in THE SEWANEE REVIEW, OXFORD AMERICAN, ELECTRIC LIT, THE COMMON, JOYLAND, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she teaches writing. In the fall, she will be a visiting fellow at Mount Holyoke College.

Nic Anstett, a writer from Baltimore, MD, loves the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the University of Oregon’s MFA program and has attended workshops through the Clarion Foundation, Lambda Literary, and Tin House, where she was a 2021 scholar. Her fiction can be found in publications such as ONE STORY, WITNESS MAGAZINE, PASSAGES NORTH, and LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE, and has been nominated for anthologies like the PUSHCART PRIZE and BEST OF THE NET. Nic has also written essays and articles for AUTOSTRADDLE, BREVITY, REACTOR, and THEM. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.