Cathy Rigg is a writer with roots that run deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. It’s where her people come from on her mother’s side—going back seven generations—and since moving away she swears those ancestors call to her, insisting their stories be told.

It’s something she can hardly resist. Her debut novel, That Which Binds Us, is forthcoming from Keylight Books in June of 2025. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Still: The Journal, Clinch Mountain Review, Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit, and short stories were nominated for Best of the Net and have been finalists for the Doris Betts Fiction Prize and Lit/South. She is proud to be part of the 2025 Women of Appalachia Project featuring “Appalachia’s finest literary, visual and performing women artists” and her short story, The Knowing, will appear in v. 16 of the associated literary journal, Women Speak.  

When not writing (or reading), Cathy can most often be found in her light-filled studio, a loaded paintbrush or slip of sandpaper or interesting chunk of “there must be something I can do with this” wood in hand. Her current obsession is watercolor although she swears she’ll get back to oils tomorrow. You’ll find her latest offerings online through her Studio CRM store on Etsy or in person at any number of community art events, which she finds delightful.

A native of Wise, Virginia and graduate of Clemson University with a degree in English, Cathy initially set her sights on a career in journalism. She became an advertising copywriter instead, founding C. C. Rigg’s, an ad studio, in 1987. The firm is known today as the brand and marketing consultancy Riggs Partners. Cathy and her husband, Tim, are the parents of three, and the grandparents of one: sweet Posey Catherine, who just happens to be exceptional. They divide their time between home in Columbia, South Carolina and a retreat in Burnsville, North Carolina, where they stare at the view and obsess over the bears on a ridge high above Asheville.