Author Bio
• Birth—March 29, 1977
• Raised—North of Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Death—February 26, 2017
• Where—Greensboro, North Carolina
Nina Riggs was a poet, author, wife, and mother of two young sons, who died of breast cancer in 2017 at the age of 39. Her memoir The Bright Hour, about living and loving "with death in the room, was published several months after her death. The book was widely acclaimed for its inspiration, even humor, and became an bestseller.
Riggs traced her literary lineage back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, her great-great-great grandfather. As she told Nora Krug of the Washington Post:
His legacy hangs long over our family, and I grew up right near his old stomping grounds north of Boston. I was literally and figuratively raised in his shadow and, since I really wanted to be a writer from a young age, I guess I was bound to have to contend with his legacy. But I didn’t always have any sense of that. In fact, I came to an understanding of his writing only later in my life. For many years I didn’t even engage with Emerson directly. His portraits were around, and the family had first editions of Emerson’s work.
Riggs left Massachusetts for North Carolina where she earned her B.A. and her M.F.A. in poetry. in 2009 she published a book of poems, Lucky, Lucky.
Breast cancer was rife in her family, on both sides—she lost her mother nearly two years before her own death, and a great aunt was diagnosed in the 1970s. When Riggs herself was diagnosed, in 2015, she wrote about living with the disease on her blog, Suspicious Country. The memoir grew out of her blog.
Riggs' other work appeared in The Washington Post and New York Times. Riggs lived with her husband John Durbenstein, a lawyer, and their two young sons in Greensboro, North Carolina. (From the publisher.)