Yang tops list of winners of the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards

St. Paul author Kao Kalia Yang was the star of last night's annual Minnesota Book Awards, winning for three titles that honor her Hmong roots.

• Yang won for "Where Rivers Part" — a memoir about her Laos-born mother — and for new children's and middle-grade books.

The other winning books: "Where They Last Saw Her," by Marcie Rendon

• "The New Science of Social Change," by Lisa Mueller
• "Locker Room Talk," edited by Michelle Filkins & Margret Aldrich
• "The Minneapolis Reckoning," by Michelle Phelps
• "Obligations to the Wounded," by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
• "Bluff," by Danez Smith
• "Where Wolves Don't Die," by Anton Treuer

Full list of finalists