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.