Don't know much about our Sept. 24 forum speaker Kao Kalia Yang? This BYU student says the opportunity to hear her speak is a "chance of lifetime." | BYU Speeches

Meet Kao Kalia Yang, the award winning author featured this year by Hastings Reads. Kalia's book, The Song Poet, tells the amazing story of her father Bee Yang. As a teenager raised in Laos, he watched his own village burn and escaped the bombing campaign dubbed "America's Secret War." Bee then survived in a war torn jungle without even a pair of shoes. In the jungle a barefoot but determined Bee met and married his wife, then took his family to Thailand where they lived in a refugee camp where