Rhiana Yazzie is a 2025 United States Artist Fellow. She is also a Lanford Wilson and Steinberg Award winning playwright, a director, and filmmaker. A Navajo Nation citizen (Ta’neeszahnii dóó Táchii’nii), she is the Artistic Director of New Native Theatre, which she started in 2009 as a response to the lack of connection and professional opportunities between Twin Cities theaters and the Native community; it is the recipient of a 2023 Headwaters Bush Prize for social justice.
Rhiana has been a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and was recognized with a Sally Ordway Award for Vision. She’s been a Playwrights’ Center Fellow multiple times (Jerome Fellowship 2006 & 2010; McKnight Fellow 2016; Core Writer) and last year she made her East Coast premiere with Nancy (2023 Kilroys) at Mosaic Theater Company. Nancy is the second play in a series about Pocahontas and her family, originally co-commissioned by The Public Theater and The Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the American Revolutions: United States History Cycle.
Rhiana’s newest play, The Nut, The Hermit, The Crow, and The Monk debuted in April 2025 at New Native Theatre closing its 15th Anniversary Season. In February 2025, she was the first Native American to write and direct a play, The Other Children of the Sun, for The Kennedy Center and is currently writing plays for Long Wharf Theatre & Rattlestick Theater (co-commission), DC’s Solas Nua & Ireland’s Fishamble theaters, and the University of New Mexico.
In 2023, she directed the US premiere of Missing at the Anchorage Opera and is now working on her first libretto, Little Ones with Anishinaabe composer & conductor, Danielle Jagelski commissioned by Renegade Opera. They are recipients of the Opera America IDEA grant.
She wrote, produced, and directed her debut feature film A Winter Love, currently seen in mainstream and Indigenous film festivals globally. It’s garnered laurels for Best Narrative Feature at the Minnesota Film Festival, Best Feature Film & Best Actress at the Weengushk International Film Festival, Achievement in Directing at the LA Skins Festival, Nominated for Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Actress & Actors at the American Indian Film Festival among other recognitions.
She is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Masters of Professional Writing where she produced events featuring Stephen Hawking, Herbie Hancock, and Spalding Gray. Rhiana wrote on AMC’s Dark Winds seasons 2 & 3 and is working on her second feature film, A College Education with co-sceenwriter, playwright, Alex Hesbrook Remier (Chayenne River Lakota).