Rhiana Yazzie (Playwright/Director) 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 and 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 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. She wrote and directed her play, The Other Children of the Sun, in February 2025 for The Kennedy Center and is currently writing plays for Long Wharf Theatre & Rattlestick Theater (co-commission), 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. She wrote, produced, and directed her debut feature film A Winter Love, currently seen in mainstream and Indigenous film festivals globally. 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.

Rhiana created New Native Theatre in 2009, a company based in the Twin Cities; it is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. Notable productions include Native Man the Musical which was praised by the Twin Cities’ local Native American newspaper, The Circle News, “The paradigm of Native American manhood shifted with New Native Theatre’s production.” It was followed up by Native Woman the Musical in 2018.  Other successes include developing original works by an array of Native American playwrights across the country; in 2023 New Native Theater was honored as a Headwaters Bush Prize Award winner for its social impact and nurturing of the creation of a Native American theater performing arts ecosystem in the state of Minnesota. New Native Theatre will celebrate its 15th anniversary in 2024-25.