He grew up in the Snoqualmie Valley raised by working-class, counter-culture parents who cultivated and sold cannabis.

Critic Ann Powers wrote of Briggs first book in the New York Times Book Review, "Briggs has captured the America that neither progressives nor family-value advocates want to think about, where bohemianism has degenerated into dangerous dropping out.

"[2] After high school Briggs joined the US Army Reserve and his unit was deployed to the Gulf War.

Briggs served as The Writer in Residence at Richard Hugo House from 2003 to 2005 where he has taught writing classes for the chronically ill at Gilda's Club and the Polyclinic, a zine class to teenagers in Redmond, Washington, produced literary events, and offered open hours to the community.

Briggs' first two book-length works of fiction, The Remains of River Names, a collection of linked stories, and the novel, Shoot the Buffalo, belong in the tradition of Pacific Northwest Literature and echo earlier work such as The Honey in the Horn by HL Davis, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, and The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald.