Keynote Sponsored by The Seidl Foundation
Way to Grow is honored to welcome Kao Kalia Yang, award-winning Hmong American author, teacher, and speaker, as the keynote speaker for our Shine Celebration!
This year’s theme, “The Head & The Heart: Together We Shine,” reflects the balance at the center of Way to Grow’s work. Ms. Yang shines as “the Heart” of our program, as she honors culture, celebrates family, and reminds us of the powerful role community plays in helping children thrive.
Ms. Yang’s award-winning memoirs (The Latehomecover, The Song Poet, Somewhere in the Unknown World, and Where Rivers Part) and celebrated children’s books (A Map Into the World, From the Tops of Trees, The Rock in My Throat, among many others) illuminate resilience, belonging, and the everyday lives of Hmong children and families.
A Guggenheim fellow and Star Tribune’s 2024 Artist of the Year, Ms. Yang brings her extraordinary gift for storytelling to the Shine Celebration, and reminds us that when families are supported, children and communities thrive.
Meet Kao Kalia Yang
Kalia was born in the refugee camps of Thailand to a family that escaped the genocide of the Secret War in Laos. She came to America at the age of six, and her first book, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, reflects upon this move. A review by Publishers Weekly praises Kalia, “Yang tells her family’s story with grace; she narrates their struggles, beautifully weaving in Hmong folklore and culture.” The Latehomecomer was the winner of two Minnesota Book Awards, a finalist for the PEN USA Award, and earned a NEA Big Read title. It is the first Hmong-authored book to gain national distribution from a literary press.
Her other memoirs include, The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father, which won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, and the PEN USA Award; Somewhere in the Unknown World; and her latest, Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life.
Kalia is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Most Beautiful Thing, The Shared Room, Yang Warriors, From the Tops of the Trees, and The Rock in My Throat, which center around Hmong children who live in our world, who dream and hurt and hope in it. She is the co-editor of a ground-breaking collection titled What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. For her work, Kalia has been the recipient of McKnight, Soros, and Guggenheim Fellowships.
When she’s not in front of an audience inspiring social change and awareness, Kalia raises a daughter and twin sons who keep her and her husband busy at their home in Minneapolis.
