is a poet, playwright, screenwriter, actor, educator, producer, curator, creator of the event series #BlackSexMatters, co-founder of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and Writer/Producer on Showtime’s record-breaking series The Chi. Her collection of poems promised instruments was the winner of the inaugural Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and published by Northwestern University Press and her play Tilikum is the winner of a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play. Kristiana is an alum of OpenTV’s Screenwriting fellowship where she is developing a series adaptation of her play suspension, which was a semi-finalist for American Theater’s Relentless Award. She is also an alum of the Goodman Theatre's Playwrights Unit where she developed her play florissant & canfield, a dramatic reimagining of her real experience during the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, which debuted at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She appeared on the fifth season of HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She presently serves as the Scribe Queen alongside Maroon Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson as a founding member of the emerging Queen Reesie Collective, harnessing the power of New Orleans' unique cultural traditions into new forms of activism, awareness, and consciousness raising activations. Kristiana is creates visionary media and experiences for provocation, liberation, and healing.