Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawaiʻi—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.

In ten stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawaiʻi. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, longing, and grief are fierce dispatches from land haunted by the specter of colonization, and 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 Oʻahu 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 Hawaiʻi 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.

Praise

“A heartbreaking collection of queer girlhood that carries the echo of generations, the failure and regrets of children and parents. It aches and aches and aches and then blossoms with the sweep of time, catastrophe, disaster, cruelty, death. Mariah Rigg’s written a stunning debut. I love this book.” — Casey Plett, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of A Safe Girl to Love, A Dream of A Woman, Little Fish, and On Community

“Extinction Capital of the World is the queer ecological collection of my dreams. Liberated from the western constraint of linearity, these ten stories blissfully cast forward and loop back, attending to all the small and significant ways our choices reverberate across time, across landscapes, across species. Whether moving through the galleries of the Honolulu Museum of Art or navigating the open waters of Kaʻiwi Channel, the characters of Rigg’s world are as vibrant and diverse as the many species populating these pages. Extinction Capital of the World is incisive and deeply compassionate, and Rigg is an extraordinary storyteller.” — Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, bestselling author of Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare

“In Extinction Capital of the World, Mariah Rigg traces the contours of contemporary Hawaiʻi with exquisite precision and grace. Across these ten stories, she shows how desire anchors us to vanishing landscapes, and how the heart finds its coordinates even as familiar worlds shift beneath our feet. These are breathtakingly beautiful dispatches from the frontlines of an imperiled ecosystem, rendered with astonishing clarity." — Kimberly King Parsons, National Book Award-nominated author of Black Light and We Were the Universe

Listed as a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Debutiful