Aja Anne Riggs

Aja A. Riggs, born Virginia Anne Riggs on December 22, 1963, died in Santa Fe, NM, on August, 2, 2025 at the age of 61.

Born in Providence, RI, to Sallie K. Riggs and Douglas Riggs, Aja graduated from School One High School in 1981. She attended Hampshire College and graduated from UMass Amherst’s University without Walls program with a degree in transpersonal psychology and counseling. She also studied at the Psychosynthesis Center in Amherst, Mass. Aja lived in various places, including Providence, RI, western Mass., Baltimore, the Ozarks in Missouri, and finally settled in Santa Fe.

She devoted her life to social justice and equality. Freedom for her was a social justice value as well as a True North for personal development. She was part of the feminist anti-nuclear weapons movement and lived at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment from 1983-84. She was a trainer for non- violent civil disobedience in Baltimore’s Sisters Together Opposing Racism, Militarism and Sexism (STORMS), Emergency Response Network, and traveled to Nicaragua to help build a school. Aja worked in various capacities, including as a carpenter, tax preparer, and caregiver.

She eventually became a Certified Professional Organizer and helped create and teach Dismantling Racism and White Privilege classes.

Although her work experience was diverse, each job allowed her to take several months off each year to work at and attend the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which she did for three decades. There, she lived close to the land and helped create a community of shared values with her extended chosen family.

Although her close friends long recognized a poetic sensibility in Aja, which was evident when she wrote even a brief text, Aja only began to write in earnest in her final years. She took poetry courses through the Institute for American Indian Arts, Santa Fe Community College, and she enrolled in a variety of workshops and classes to soak up every bit of information on craft, form, and style that she could in the short time that she had left. Her greatest sorrow was not having time to write more poems, and she was working on a poetry collection up until her final days.

In 2012, after being diagnosed with stage 3-C uterine cancer, Aja joined New Mexico’s Aid in Dying Lawsuit. Despite her aversion to being in the spotlight and fueled by her passionate belief in the rightness of the cause, Aja became a spokesperson for the law. After a long battle in the courts, the law was finally passed by the state legislature, granting mentally competent, terminally ill patients the legal right to obtain aid in dying from their physician when needed.

For the last 14 years of her life, Aja lived with the effects of her cancer treatments, which saved her life but greatly diminished her physical capacities. This chapter of her life revealed her depths of wisdom, steadiness, and acceptance of life’s terms, and an even fiercer love for all of the riches life has to offer. Her sweet, wry, and expansive sense of humor never left her.

Her stepfather predeceased Aja, Michael T. Corgan. She leaves behind her beloved wife Nicola J. Redfern, and their dog Chaia, parents Doug and Sallie, her sister Susi Riggs, her uncle Hanson and his wife Janice, and a cherished group of friends, including Cindy Parry, Leykn Schmatz, and Tzivia Gover.

Aja loved book arts, cacti, kayaking, solving word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and traveling in her ‘wheelie house’ to enjoy the natural beauty of the landscape. She had a curious, precise, inquisitive, and beautiful mind, and a delightful laugh. She loved life fully and left it reluctantly, with many more poems still to write.

Her family of friends wish to thank the amazing healers and helpers who cared for Aja, especially Dr. Quintana, Karen at Amber Care Hospice, and Dr. Anderson.

To honor Aja’s life, please consider donating blood to the Red Cross if you are able. Donations are also welcomed in Aja’s memory to the Institute for American Indian Arts https://iaia.edu/, or Compassion & Choices https://compassionandchoices.org/.