Author Visit: Kao Kalia Yang

Join us for a visit and story time with Hmong American writer, teacher, and speaker Kao Kalia Yang! She will be reading her children’s book The Rock in My Throat. Books will be available for sale.

About the book: “At first, no one noticed when I stopped talking at school.

In this moving true story, Kao Kalia Yang shares her experiences as a young Hmong refugee navigating life at home and at school. Having seen the poor treatment her parents received when making their best efforts at speaking English, she no longer speaks at school. Kalia feels as though a rock has become lodged in her throat, and it grows heavier each day. Although the narrative is somber, it is also infused with moments of beauty, love, and hope.”

About the author: Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American teacher, speaker, and writer. Her work crosses audiences and genres. She is the award-winning author of the memoirs, The Latehomecomer, The Song
Poet, Somewhere in the Unknown World, and Where Rivers Part. Yang co-edited the groundbreaking book, What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. She is a librettist for The Song Poet Opera (commissioned by Minnesota Opera). Her children’s books, A Map into the World, The Most Beautiful Thing, The Shared Room, Yang Warriors, From the Tops of the Trees, The Rock in My Throat, and Caged center Hmong children and families who live in our world, who dream, hurt,
and hope in it. Yang’s middle grade debut fiction, The Diamond Explorer, contends with the narratives we are given and the ones we give. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary
Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, the Carter G. Woodson Award, and garnered seven Minnesota Book Awards. She’s Star Tribune’s 2024 Artist of the Year. Yang holds an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Carleton College. She is a McKnight, Soros, and Guggenheim fellow.