Larissa FastHorse (Sicangu Lakota Nation) is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, 2020 MacArthur Fellow (Genius Grant), professor of practice (literature) at Arizona State University’s Department of English, award winning writer/choreographer, and co-founder of Indigenous Direction, the nation’s leading consulting company for Indigenous arts and audiences. Larissa’s revised book of the beloved Jerome Robbins Broadway musical, Peter Pan, toured nationally and internationally. She made her Broadway debut in the 2022-2023 season with her satirical comedy, The Thanksgiving Play, making her the first known female, Native playwright to be produced on Broadway. The Thanksgiving Play is one of the most produced plays in America and abroad with over 300 separate productions. In fall of 2025, Larissa performed her autobiographical solo show, Fancy Dancer, in collaboration with Seattle Children’s Theatre and Seattle Rep.
In 2019 Larissa entered film and television with a series at Freeform, a movie for Disney Channel, and a series for NBC. Since then she has been in development for projects with AppleTV, Taylor Made Productions, Echo Lake, Dreamworks, Fox, Teen Nick, and Netflix. Larissa began her writer training as a Sundance Native Feature Fellow, Fox Diversity Fellow, ABC Native American Fellow, and an intern at Universal Pictures before writing for theater.
Additional produced plays include Fake it Until You Make It (Center Theatre Group/Arena Stage), For The People (Guthrie), The Democracy Project, What Would Crazy Horse Do? (KCRep), Landless and Cow Pie Bingo (AlterTheater), Average Family (Children’s Theater Company of Minneapolis), Teaching Disco Squaredancing to Our Elders: a Class Presentation (Native Voices at the Autry), Vanishing Point (Eagle Project), and Cherokee Family Reunion (Mountainside Theater). She develops work with the top theaters in the nation including Center Theatre Group, The Public, Second Stage, Yale Rep, Cornerstone, and Arena Stage.
Over the past several years, Larissa has created a nationally recognized trilogy of community engaged plays with Michael John Garcés and Cornerstone Theater Company– Urban Rez, Native Nation, and Wicoun. The trilogy is coming out as a book, Native Nation Project (TCG Books 2025). The second play, Native Nation, was the largest Indigenous theater production in the history of American theater with over 400 Native artists involved in the production in association with ASU Gammage. Larissa’s radical inclusion process with Indigenous tribes has been honored with the most prestigious national arts funding from MacArthur, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, NEFA, First People’s Fund, the NEA Our Town Grant, Mellon Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and others. Larissa’s company, Indigenous Direction, recently produced the first land acknowledgement on national television for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC. Along with partner Ty Defoe, their groundbreaking work is redefining Indigenous art representation and education in America.
Larissa’s other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for an American Playwright, NEA Distinguished New Play Development Grant, Joe Dowling Annamaghkerrig Fellowship, AATE Distinguished Play Award, Inge Residency, Sundance/Ford Foundation Fellowship, Aurand Harris Fellowship, and the UCLA Native American Program Woman of the Year. She is vice chair of the board of directors of Playwrights Horizons and represented by Jonathan Mills at Paradigm NY. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband, the sculptor Edd Hogan.