Kao Kalia Yang
“For me, writing is desperate and it is fraught with passion.
Passion that makes my fingers shake because it’s moving faster than my mind, tangled in heart, and caught in everyone else I adore.”
-Kao Kalia Yang
Kalia Yang is author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir and currently Artist-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where first-year students are reading her memoir in their composition courses.
Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand in 1980. At the age of nine she settled in St. Paul with her family. Her work portrays the immigrant experience of Hmong refugees while also telling the personal story of her family and her close relationship with her grandmother.
A graduate of Carleton College with an MFA from Columbia University, Yang is the co-founder of Words Wanted, a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. She has produced a documentary film about the experiences of Hmong American refugees and is also at work on a collection of poems and a book tentatively titled “Still Fluttering Heart.”
Events
- Wednesday, October 20, at 7:30 pm – “Plantingthe memories of Life”: Schofield Hall, UW-Eau Claire Campus
- Friday, October 22: Visits to North High School, South Middle School and Altoona public schools
Publications and Projects
- The Latehomecomer (Coffee House Press, 2008)
- “The Place Where We Were Born,” a lyric documentary
- “Still Fluttering Heart,” a work in progress
