Rhiana Yazzie is a playwright, a director, TV writer, filmmaker, and a 2025 United States Artist Fellow. She is also a Lanford Wilson and Steinberg Award winning playwright. 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. She is one of the few women to have written and directed a play for The Kennedy Center: The Other Children of the Sun, which debuted in February 2025. Rhiana's work in theater has had an important impact on growing the artform in Minnesota for the last 19 years; she has been a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow and was recognized with a Sally Ordway Award for Vision. Rhiana wrote on AMC's Dark Winds seasons 2 & 3 and wrote, produced, and directed her debut feature film A Winter Love. She is working on her second feature film, an adaptation of a play called Wounspaye Wankatya, A College Education.