Kao Kalia

Yang

Award-Winning Memoirist

Children’s & Middle Grade Author

Travels from: Minneapolis, MN

“Yang’s memoirs of Hmong life, traditions and displacement are not just powerful additions to the canon of immigrant literature — they are powerful books about life itself.” — San Francisco Chronicle

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, Caged, A Home on the Page, The Blue House I Loved, and Momma’s Christmas Gift 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. Her newest memoir, The Waiting Years (2027), is Kalia’s story of discovery, a chronicle of a young writer’s beginnings.

Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN America 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.

Kao Kalia's Featured Titles

The Waiting Years

Holiday House |

January 12, 2027

Memoir

A mesmerizing true story of a young Hmong girl in Minnesota that celebrates the immigrant experience.

At fourteen years old, Kalia feels like two different girls. At home, she is the reliable daughter who makes dinner and takes care of her younger siblings, while her older sister is in class and her parents work long hours. But at school, she is silent, shy—waiting for the day her life will really begin.

Kalia and her family are Hmong refugees who have immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota, into a tiny, dilapidated house. The Waiting Years takes us through Kalia’s high school years, as she struggles to find her voice in a place she feels she doesn’t belong. She records it all in her journals—her crushes on boys and attempts to pass the driver’s test, as well as her insecurities and struggle with lupus, a debilitating auto-immune disease.

The Waiting Years is a moving memoir of a storyteller’s formative years, honoring her past and forging her future, that celebrates an immigrant community in Minnesota, from award-winning author of The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Friendship & Community, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Kid-Lit: Young Adult, Memoir & Personal Journeys

Momma’s Christmas Gift

Kokila |

October 6, 2026

Children’s

A modern Gift of the Magi tale of a poor Hmong family celebrating Christmas and the love, sacrifice, and generosity that holds them close.

Six days a week, Momma wakes up before dawn to head to the factory. She leaves three simple bowls of rice and egg on the table for her children and always returns home before their bellies start to rumble. Sister knows their family does not have much. She loves walking home and being greeted by the glowing Santa on the corner and the twinkling lights and decorated trees inside homes. She plays with her siblings in the snow and together they dream and wish.

On Christmas Eve, Momma sneaks away with Auntie May, and when it is nearly night, Momma returns home bearing a wonderful surprise. But how can this be?

Momma’s Christmas Gift is a touching story about the magnificent gift of a mother’s love and how all mothers make magic daily, especially during the holidays.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Class & Economic Inequality, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Kid-Lit: Picture Books & Early Readers

The Blue House I Loved

Univ Of Minnesota Press |

February 10, 2026

Children’s

A Hmong girl tells the story of her beloved aunt and uncle’s first home in America—long gone, but still alive in the family’s memories

The Blue House I Loved centers on a family of newly arrived Hmong refugees who move into the lower level of a duplex in St. Paul, Minnesota. The narrator loves her aunt and uncle’s home with its mismatched furniture, but it is too small for the large family. The boy cousins sleep in the three-season porch, where their wet hair freezes in wintertime, and the rest of the family crowds into two bedrooms. Yet this is the cherished home where they live and love, their own small corner of a very large and unfamiliar place, and in this blue house a young girl learns about her new country. Eventually, the family moves in search of more space, and years later the house is torn down. Where it was, green grass now grows. But for this girl and her family, the ghost of the house remains, its memories a strong thread that holds time at bay and hearts close together.

Combining Kao Kalia Yang’s lyrical prose with ethereal illustrations by artist and architect Jen Shin, The Blue House I Loved speaks to the multitude of refugee experiences around the world, honoring the challenges they face and the homes they create together.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Family Narratives, Friendship & Community, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Kid-Lit: Picture Books & Early Readers, Social & Emotional Development

A Home on the Page

Carolrhoda Books |

February 3, 2026

Children’s

Nou loves her family, and she likes the brown house where they live, surrounded by trees with sheltering branches. But the young Hmong American girl’s sense of safety and belonging is shattered after she wakes one day to find a hateful message spray-painted on the family’s mailbox: “Asians Go Home.” So Nou asks her parents if they can leave.

Nou’s question leads her on a journey to discover where each member of her family finds home. For her father, it is in his songs. For her mother, it is in the garden. In a world that doesn’t always welcome her, where can Nou find home?

This extraordinary story from author Kao Kalia Yang and illustrator Seo Kim tenderly explores how a young girl navigates racism and ultimately turns to writing, creating a home for herself on the page―and in the world.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, Bullying & Social Anxiety, Class & Economic Inequality, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Friendship & Community, Kid-Lit: Picture Books & Early Readers

The Diamond Explorer

Dutton Books for Young Readers |

July 15, 2025

Middle Grade

From APALA-winning author and Guggenheim Fellow Kao Kalia Yang, a middle-grade debut about a Hmong American boy’s struggle to find a place for himself in America and in the world of his ancestors.

Malcolm is the youngest child of Hmong refugees, and he was born over a decade after his youngest sibling, giving him a unique perspective on his complicated immigrant family.

In the first part of the story, we meet Malcolm as an elementary school kid through the eyes of the adults in his life—his parents and siblings, but also the white teachers at his Minnesota schools. As middle school begins, we encounter Malcolm in his own words, and suddenly we see that this “quiet, slow Hmong boy” is anything but. Malcolm is a gifted collector of his family’s stories and tireless seeker of his own place within an evolving Hmong American culture, and his journey toward becoming a shaman like his grandparents before him is inspiring and revelatory.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Fiction, Friendship & Community, Kid-Lit: Middle Grade

Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life

Atria Books |

March 19, 2024

Memoir

This powerful memoir about a Hmong family’s epic journey to safety is a profound “testament to the miraculous strength of women and the indomitable resolve of the human spirit” (Cristina Henríquez, author of The Book of Unknown Americans).

Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was marked by the violence of America’s Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle.

Perpetually on the run and on the brink of starvation, Tswb eventually crossed paths with the man who would become her future husband. Leaving her own mother behind, she joined his family at a refugee camp, a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Eventually becoming a mother herself, Tswb raised her daughters in a state of constant fear and hunger until they were able to emigrate to the US, where the determined couple enrolled in high school even though they were both nearly thirty and worked grueling jobs to provide for their children.

Now, her daughter, Kao Kalia Yang, reveals her mother’s astonishing saga with tenderness and clarity, giving voice to the countless resilient refugees who are often overlooked as one of the essential foundations of this country. “Haunting and painfully relevant” (Booklist), Where Rivers Part is destined to become a classic.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Food Sovereignty & Security, Grief & Loss, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Memoir & Personal Journeys

Somewhere in the Unknown World

Metropolitan |

November 10, 2020

Immigration and Biography

From “an exceptional storyteller,” Somewhere in the Unknown World is a collection of powerful stories of refugees who have found new lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.

All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Although Minnesota is not known for its diversity, the state has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Now, with nativism on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang―herself a Hmong refugee―has gathered stories of the stateless who today call the Twin Cities home.

Here are people who found the strength and courage to rebuild after leaving all they hold dear. Awo and her mother, who escaped from Somalia, reunite with her father on the phone every Saturday, across the span of continents and decades. Tommy, born in Minneapolis to refugees from Cambodia, cannot escape the war that his parents carry inside. As Afghani flees the reach of the Taliban, he seeks at every stop what he calls a certificate of his humanity. Mr. Truong brings pho from Vietnam to Frogtown in St. Paul, reviving a crumbling block as well as his own family.

In Yang’s exquisite, necessary telling, these fourteen stories for refugee journeys restore history and humanity to America’s strangers and redeem its long tradition of welcome.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Creative Nonfiction, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Memoir & Personal Journeys

What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color

Univ Of Minnesota Press |

October 15, 2019

Nonfiction

Native women and women of color poignantly share their pain, revelations, and hope after experiencing the traumas of miscarriage and infant loss

What God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind—and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America.

From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood. In its heartbreaking beauty, this book offers an integral perspective on how culture and religion, spirit and body, unite in the reproductive lives of women of color and Indigenous women as they bear witness to loss, search for what is not there, and claim for themselves and others their fundamental humanity. Powerfully and with brutal honesty, they write about what it means to reclaim life in the face of death.

Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang acknowledge “who we had been could not have prepared us for who we would become in the wake of these words,” yet the writings collected here offer insight, comfort, and, finally, hope for all those who, like the women gathered here, have found grief a lonely place.

Contributors: Jennifer Baker, Michelle Borok, Lucille Clifton, Sidney Clifton, Taiyon J. Coleman, Arfah Daud, Rona Fernandez, Sarah Agaton Howes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Soniah Kamal, Diana Le-Cabrera, Janet Lee-Ortiz, Maria Elena Mahler, Chue Moua, Jami Nakamura Lin, Jen Palmares Meadows, Dania Rajendra, Marcie Rendon, Seema Reza, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, Kari Smalkoski, Catherine R. Squires, Elsa Valmidiano.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Creative Nonfiction, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Family Narratives, Grief & Loss, Health & Wellness, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Nonfiction, Women’s Health

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir

Coffee House Press |

April 11, 2017

Memoir

One Hmong family’s harrowing escape from war in Laos to the uncertainty of a new home as refugees in Minnesota.

Yang’s award-winning memoir of her family’s harrowing escape from war in Laos is a love letter to her grandmother, a troubling portrait of the consequences of US intervention in Southeast Asia, and a glimpse into the little-seen exodus of the Hmong people, first to refugee camps in Thailand and then, for many, to new homes in Minnesota.

BIPOC Representation, Family Narratives, History & Biography, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Memoir & Personal Journeys, Military & War

The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

Metropolitan Books |

May 10, 2016

Memoir

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD

In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes.

Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet―a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America’s Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee’s mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage, BIPOC Representation, Family Narratives, History & Biography, Immigrant & Refugee Perspectives, Memoir & Personal Journeys, Military & War

Refugees

Born a stateless child in a refugee camp, Yang’s journey of coming to America at the age of six, growing up in the housing projects and with the support of public resources allows her a unique and universal perspective on issues of war, the growing refugee crisis, and the importance of peace.

Literacy

Yang comes from the most linguistically isolated group in America, the Hmong. Her people are new to the written language; it was not until the 1950s that a French missionary devised a Roman alphabet to translate the Bible in the high mountains of Laos. Now, one of the first and most widely recognized Hmong American voices in literature, Yang’s work crosses genres and audiences. A gifted teacher, Yang has been in K-12 public and private schools, taught at private and public universities and graduate programs, and in the process has gained valuable insight into the ways in which literacy engages and positively impacts the lives of individuals and communities, how it altars our understanding of the past, and shapes our hold over the future.

Class, Race, Gender, Religion, and more

Yang’s complex identity lives at the convergence of many of the -isms that we contend with as a society and culture. Her perspective as a first-generation American who grew up in poverty, her fraught journey to understanding her place in an American racial scape dominated by ideas of Black and White, her deep belief in a spirituality rooted in ideas of shamanism and animism, and allegiance to the Hmong, a stateless people with a long but often ignored history, positions her uniquely to contend with ideas of belonging and citizenship, progress and development, and spirituality and religion.

Women's Stories

Much of Yang’s work has centered on the powerful and often unknown women whose life stories have inspired her to build a life based on her faith and not her fears, courageous women whose intelligence and light shine across time and place.

Kindness

Yang’s life is made possible because of the kindness of family and strangers alike. Kindness as an opportunity to push beyond limits, as an invitation to enter spaces without walls, as an intentional approach to each other. Yang believes that we are all characters in each other’s books and we get to decide what kind of character we want to be in the life of another.

Younger Audiences

The Blue House I Loved: Why does memory matter? What is the gift of remembering? A house that once stood is gone but the family members who shared it, hold it close in their hearts.
A Home on the Page: The Hmong have no homeland. When a Hmong family finds a message on their mailbox: ASIANS GO HOME, they must each find a way to belonging…via songs, gardens, gatherings, and for Nou, the written word.
Momma’s Christmas Gift: Grace and generosity are at the heart of this story about strangers and family, about mothers and daughters, about Christmases made possible because of love that comes from many directions.
The Waiting Years: Yang’s father, Bee X. Yang, tells her, “Growing up hurts because you are pushing against everything you are, the very body that holds you.” In an exploration of adolescence, Yang chronicles the emergence of a young writer.
A Map Into the World: Using the premise and ideas of her debut picture book, Kao Kalia Yang leads reflective sessions on how human beings carry maps for each other, guides writers of all ages through explorations of moments where they’ve felt lost, where sharing a story and/or care allows them a pathway to themselves and the world.
The Most Beautiful Thing: At the heart of this story about a refugee family with little money but lots of love, there is an important question: What are the things in your lives that money cannot buy?–and the talk and presentation are an invitation to ponder the gifts around us, given not through an exchange of money, but of heart.
Yang Warriors: The book tells a story of a group of hungry children who sneak out of a refugee camp to go foraging for greens, and in so doing teaches those around them about courage. What does courage look and feel like? Where are the heroes in our lives? These are the thematic considerations Kalia in her presentation about the power of love, family, and triumph in times of hardship.
The Shared Room: Presentations on grief and familial connections. What happens to love when someone dies? How do we befriend a memory? How do memories help us stay close to those who are no longer in our lives?
From the Tops of the Trees: A refugee child wonders if all the world is a refugee camp until an incredible day when her father takes her up the tallest tree in the camp so she can see beyond the fences of her world. Perspective is an integral component to visionary work. Kalia speaks about the power of lifting others.
Caged: The story opens with, “I was born in a cage but I didn’t know it,” and speaks to the imagination of children, how they cannot be contained. It is a story about the ways in which children free each other from despair and hopelessly, how refugees are held and how they hold.
The Rock in MY Throat: Kalia grew up as a selective mute in English. Now, she writes the stories that she never could have spoken. This is a nonfiction story and speaks to the importance of voice, and the forces that sometimes keep young people from speaking.

“Kalia is an authentic, kind, and vivid storyteller and that came through in our virtual author talk for elementary students in our district. Students, teachers, and administrators raved about how powerful A Home on the Page was as a story and how meaningful it was to have Kalia answer their questions afterwards as well.” — Ann Arbor Public Schools, 2026

“Kao Kalia Yang was amazing. Her presence and words reaffirmed our common history and connections to one another.” — University of Chicago Lab School, 2026

“One of the most moving keynote presentations I’ve ever heard.” — Minnesota West Community & Technical College, 2025

“Kao Kalia Yang delivered the standout keynote at the 2025 Peace & Literacy Conference. Through her skill in storytelling, she fused justice, scholarship, and lived truth. She did so to trace her history of selective mutism as a child to the linguistic injustice she witnessed as English-speaking contexts demeaned her Hmong parents. This ‘rock in her throat’ of selective mutism showed how silence can become a survival strategy, and how empathetic literacy can transform that silence into voice. In her speech, Yang linked her childhood “rocks” to her current writing and public work, where she endeavors to carry forward the stories of others, such as refugees who live with grief and moral injury. Grounded in trauma-informed and translanguaging perspectives, Yang offered advice focused on seeing the heart of students behind the standards of scripted curriculum. Her words supported maneuvering that educators can use now: name what silences students, make space for the unsaid through activities like testimony-centered discussion, and honor home languages as assets. Her talk anchored the conference and made a clear case that peace and literacy are inseparable; dignity, not deficit, must guide learning. We left with practical empathy, an example of what love looks like, and the courage to listen more deeply.” — Drake Burke, Minnesota State University, 2025

“We were honored to welcome Kao Kalia Yang as the keynote speaker at this year’s Peace & Literacy Institute. Her words challenged us to imagine a future built not on fear, but on compassion… and to see peace not as a distant dream, but as a daily choice. Thank you, Kalia, for showing us how stories can heal, connect, and inspire us to build a more peaceful world.” — Minnesota Reading Association, 2025

“We couldn’t have asked for a better speaker to kick off our year’s forum series. [Kao Kalia Yang] was well-received and her words created waves of impact that are still reverberating through our campus. Beyond that, she and her parents are some of the finest people I’ve ever known and it was a complete joy to have them here. We were absolutely delighted in every way with Kalia!” — Brigham Young University

“I’d love for you to share with her how grateful we are for her voice and leadership last night. She’s as inspiring in person as she is on the page. We were deeply moved by her story… her ability to connect and honor her family’s journey and the journey of so many others. Kalia helped build bridges and open doors last night… while also eloquently uplifting the voices we all need to hear.” — Alight, Minneapolis

“Fiona McCrae, Anderson Center board member and publisher/CEO of Graywolf Press, said in a prepared release: ‘Kao Kalia Yang is a cultural force — a writer with an expansive vision and a fierce heart. In her books for adults as well as for children she explores and celebrates her Hmong heritage with a rare and compelling compassion. Her words have moved thousands in Minnesota and around the world …Through Yang’s work, many thousands of Americans of all ages now have a better understanding of the experiences and culture of Hmong people. Yet part of what makes Yang’s work so powerful is that while the experiences she describes are specific to her family and to her people, they also reflect universal themes.’” — Mary Ann Grossman, Pioneer Press, 2022

“Kao Kalia Yang has been called the foremost chronicler of Hmong life in the United States, and though this isn’t wrong, it’s the kind of tempered acclaim with which immigrant authors are especially familiar. Let’s retire the qualified praise. Her immensely powerful new book confirms Yang as one of America’s sharpest nonfiction writers.” — Kevin Canfield, Minnesota Star Tribune, 2024

“Kao Kalia Yang’s narration of her book “The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father” ought not to work. As she tells the story of her father, Hmong song-poet Bee Yang, and his life in Laos during the Vietnam War, the oppression and killing fields that followed, his tenuous existence as a refugee in Thailand, and his sacrifices as an immigrant to the United States, Yang breaks all the rules. She narrates in a simple, declarative style, seemingly artless and with a largely unvarying pitch and cadence. There is no acting, no emoting, no verbal pyrotechnics whatsoever; simply line after line of experiences, memories and impressions about her father, Hmong life and culture, and the quiet struggles of immigrants riding on gently swelling tides of restrained emotion. Yet this is easily one of the most moving and eloquent audiobooks you will ever experience, and the perfect illustration of a truth that even veteran narrators struggle to grasp: less is often more, and the listener’s emotional journey must take precedence over the narrator’s.” — David Wright, The Seattle Times, 2019

“Enter Kao Kalia Yang, among the most lyrical and eloquent memoirists of her generation.” — Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, The Christian Century, 2017

“Where Rivers Part confirms Kao Kalia Yang’s position as not only the most important figure in Hmong American literature but one of the most interesting memoirists at work today.” — Ann Fadiman

“A“collective refugee memoir” that serves as an object lesson in the utility of creative nonfiction. In the prologue, Yang describes wanting to write this book years ago but feeling like she was not yet ready as a writer. Whether she was correct in her self-assessment then, she’s certainly up to the job now. This is a work of technical as well as empathetic mastery. The narrative consists of a series of stories of refugees who have ended up in Minnesota, Yang’s home state. (The author is a Hmong refugee who was born in a Thai refugee camp after her parents fled Laos.) Her subjects’ origins are global but cluster primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The stories are as powerful as they are unique, and Yang makes the wise decision to get out of the way and let her subjects express themselves. For example, Awo talks about her weekly calls home to Somalia: ‘Every Saturday, in those conversations, they become a full family: a mother, a father, and their children, voices celebrating their gratitude for each other’s safety and small successes. Each is reminded of the immense love in their lives, a love that survives unimaginable distance.’ Throughout, the author’s straight-ahead, declarative sentences can’t conceal that her presence is all over this book. Her immersively descriptive language is reminiscent of her two previous memoirs, The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet, and her delicate touch allows us to see what is right in front of us: luck. If we are not refugees, we might have been. If our lives have been relatively stable, they may not remain so. ‘The people in this book are people going through this storm with us all on this very night,’ she writes near the end. She is addressing her own children, but she is speaking to the rest of us as well. A potent lesson in empathy that is all the more powerful for never presenting itself as a lesson.” — Kirkus Review of Somewhere in the Unknown World, 2020

Kao Kalia Yang’s Media Page

Kao Kalia Yang’s News Page

Honors, Awards & Recognition

General Awards:
-Star Tribune Artist of the Year 2025
-Minnesota Public Radio Hmong Changemaker 2025
-Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Carleton College 2024
-Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction 2023
-McKnight Fellow 2023, 2013
-International Institute’s Olga Zoltai Award 2020
-Sally Award for Social Impact 2019
-A.P. Anderson Award 2018

Awards for Books:
-7 MN Book Awards (winningest MN Book Award author in MN)
-2 MN Book Award Finalists
-Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize Finalist
-National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
-Chautauqua Prize Finalist
-APALA Award Winner
-2 APALA Award Honors
-NEA Big Read Title
-Carter G. Woodson Award
-PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award in Nonfiction Finalist
-Charlotte Zolotow Award Finalist
-Heartland Book Award
-4 Heartland Book Award Finalists
–The Song Poet named MN Star Tribune’s Best of ten books of the Decade
–The Song Poet is Esquire Magazine’s #16 Best Memoir of all time
–Where Rivers Part is Esquire Magazine’s Best Memoirs of 24
-Somewhere in the Unknown World is a Kirkus Best of the Year