Kalia is an effective and compassionate teacher. She has completed residencies across K-12 institutions, from the poorest school districts in the nation to some of the wealthiest schools in the world. Kalia has taught in the Columbia University Our Word Workshops, at Concordia University-St. Paul, St. Catherine’s University, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, North Hennepin Community College, Century College, Carleton College, Randolph’s Low-Res MFA Program, and is on faculty at Pacific University’s Low-Res MFA Program. She is the Edelstein-Keller Writer-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic year.
Kalia teaches occasional classes at the Loft Literary Center, different library systems, community arts initiatives, and in the prisons.
For teaching inquires, please contact her speaking agent or use the contact feature on the page.
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Thaum Hluas Txog Hnub Laus: When the Days of Youth are Gone (Bee Yang, 2014)
This is an album of Hmong song poetry, kwv txhiaj hmoob, composed and sung by Bee Yang, Kao Kalia Yang’s father. The album notes and English translation of one of the songs are by Kao Kalia Yang.
Kwv txhiaj is, in the words of Ralph Ellison on the American Blues, “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-cosmic lyricism. As a form, the blues [and kwv txhiaj] is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.”
NOTE: The duration of the songs do not reflect the actual song length. Please consider ordering the CD for the full songs. Thank you.
*This CD is available for purchase for $15. Click below to order: