Rhiannon Giddens - Click to see all titles by this author.

“There are people who have incredible stories that we don’t talk about. People who did amazing things, men and women who faced incredible odds, and there’s nothing wrong with them being heroes for once, you know?”

Rhiannon Giddens is a multi-award-winning American-born musician, singer, songwriter, actor, librettist, and author who is a superstar in the world of folk music and world music. A native of North Carolina, she is multiracial, with ancestry that includes European-Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans of the Lumbee, Occaneechi, and Seminole tribes.

Rhiannon is a graduate of the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory at Oberlin College. She is a cofounder of the GRAMMY® Award-winning old-time string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Black female supergroup Our Native Daughters. Rhiannon also received a 2022 GRAMMY® for Best Folk Album for her collaboration with Francesco Turrisi on the album They’re Calling Me Home.

Among her many additional honors, she is a recipient of a 2017 “Genius” Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, which noted, "Giddens's drive to understand and convey the nuances, complexities, and interrelationships between musical traditions is enhancing our musical present with a wealth of sounds and textures from the past." In 2023, Rhiannon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her opera Omar in which she composed the libretto, and co-composed the music with acclaimed film composer Michael Abels. As an author, her children’s books are based on the lyrics of some of her best-known songs.

Rhiannon has a daughter and a son, and currently lives in Ireland.