The UT Creative Writing Program is thrilled to present a reading by two of its alums in celebration of their debut short story collections. Samantha Edmonds (A Preponderance of Starry Beings) and Mariah Rigg (Extinction Capital of the World) will read from their work on Monday, September 8 at 7pm in the Lindsay Young Auditorium of John C. Hodges Library on the UT Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Samantha Edmonds is the author of the story collection A Preponderance of Starry Beings (Triquarterly, 2025) as well as the chapbooks Pretty to Think So and The Space Poet. Her works have appeared in The New York Times, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review, Creative Nonfiction, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others. She's an Assistant Professor in the creative writing program at Berry College and lives in Rome, Georgia.  

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 is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Lambda Literary, among others. Her work has been featured in The Sewanee Review, Oxford American, Electric Lit, Chicago Review of Books, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.