About this event
The Rock in My Throat
Award-winning Hmong American author Kao Kalia Yang will read from picture book, The Rock in My Throat, and reflect on her experiences of selective mutism in English and how her silence led her on a journey that would end on the page.
Program
5:30 pm
Reception, resource fair with community partners, and dinner
6:30 pm
The Rock in My Throat | Kao Kalia Yang
7:30 pm
Book signing
Free parking is available in our underground parking garage. The entrance is at 821 Park Avenue on Park Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets. Take the elevator to the first floor.
Bio
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.
