Khaty Xiong was born to Hmong refugees from Laos and is the author of the collection, Poor Anima (Apogee Press, 2015), which holds the distinction of being the first full-length collection of poetry published by a Hmong-American woman in the U.S. She has also written three chapbooks: Ode to the Far Shore, Deer Hour, and Elegies.
Xiong’s work has been featured in Poetry, the Margins, Seneca Review, Academy of American Poets, the New York Times, How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011), and elsewhere. She was awarded an Individual Excellence Award (2016) from the Ohio Arts Council, the 2019 Roxane Gay Fellowship in Poetry from Jack Jones Literary Arts, and is the spring 2022 artist-in-residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, among other honors.
Xiong worked on her second poetry collection during her stay at MacDowell in 2018. The book, which explores both Hmong and non-Hmong folklore and creation mythology, follows the sudden loss of her mother. Her poem, "On Visiting the Franklin Park Conservatory & Botanical Gardens" was highlighted at the Poetry Foundation Gallery in Chicago. The poem was originally published in Poetry’s inaugural double-issue of Asian American works in 2017.
In 2022, Xiong continued work on her second poetry manuscript.
