Kao Kalia Yang is an author, public speaker, and teacher. She was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand and settled with her family in St. Paul, Minnesota, when she was six years old. After graduating from Carleton College, she moved to New York to complete an M.F.A. at Columbia University. She moved back to the Twin Cities to launch her writing career and has been based there ever since.
Kalia has taught in K-12 schools in a variety of communities, as well as at many colleges and universities. She is presently the Edelstein-Keller Writer-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and will continue in that position through May 2022.