Q&A With Two Minnesota Book Award Nominees: JoJo Bell and Kao Kalia Yang

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JoJo Bell (photo by by Genét Jean-Pierre)

JoJo Bell’s “Red Stained: The Life of Hilda Simms”

One of the 2025 Minnesota Book Award nominees for General Non-Fiction is JoJo Bell for “Red Stained,” the biography of Black activist actress Hilda Simms of Minneapolis, who became part of the American Negro Theater of Harlem in 1943 (Minnesota Historical Society Press). We asked Bell a few questions about what inspired her about the story, and why she has worked to bring Simms out of obscurity.

How were you introduced to Hilda Simms’ life?

I first came across Hilda Simms while researching Black history in Minnesota for the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota (AAICM). I was looking for lesser-known figures whose stories hadn’t been fully explored and Hilda’s name appeared a few times on a sparse Wikipedia page and in a couple of old Star Tribune articles. The lack of information only made me more curious. Here was a woman who had starred on Broadway, appeared in Hollywood films and television, and performed internationally, yet her story had faded from public memory. I wanted to understand why.

What did you want to convey in telling her story?

Hilda’s life is a powerful lens through which we can explore the intersection of race, gender, and activism in mid-20th century America. She was not only a talented actress but also an outspoken advocate for civil rights and racial equity in the arts. She pushed for fair pay and dignified roles for Black actors, even when it came at a cost to her career. Like many artists of her time, she was caught in the Hollywood Red Scare, and FBI surveillance effectively silenced her. I wanted to show how structural barriers shaped her life and career while also honoring her resilience, talent, and commitment to justice—all things she learned as a Minnesota-born Black woman.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on uncovering more about Hilda, particularly through the FBI files that were kept on her, which I requested during the pandemic. Beyond that, I continue my work with AAICM, developing exhibitions and events that highlight Black history in Minnesota. I’m also exploring new research and writing projects that expand on the themes of race, gender, and public memory.

Excerpt

The Prolific Output of Kao Kalia Lang

You have three books nominated for Minnesota Book Awards this year. How do you find time to be so prolific?

The most important truth is that while these books all came out last year, they were written across the span of the last seven years. The Diamond Explorer, middle grade fiction, took the longest for me to work through. Where Rivers Part was my big pandemic project. I wrote the draft within an hour for The Rock in My Throat at the invitation of my editor.

So while each book has their own story and their own timelines, it is a wonder that they all came at the same time. Stories abound. The questions have always been: Can I do it justice? Am I the right person to tell a certain story? How does it fit into the body of work I am building? These questions guide my pacing and production.

Where are you drawing inspiration for your many projects?

I tend to say “yes” to opportunities to hear, to learn, to gather stories. In the process, I find shiny bits of beauty scattered on life’s sidewalks, bits of glitter among the green of grass, and sometimes I’m just following the force of all that is above me, looking on down, allowing myself to be swayed by the changing winds, the trajectory of sun and moon.

I don’t need faraway places or fancy settings to find the good stories, the powerful ones that will draw the moisture from my eyes, the heat from my skin. I look for them in the lives around me, in our neighborhoods, our headlines.

I’m continually inspired by the wonder of nature, the ambitions of people, the fierce will to survive, and somehow in all of it, the gift of beauty, of breath.

What’s next?

I have a picture book coming later this year from the University of Minnesota Press. It is about a blue house that used to be on Maryland Avenue, behind the bars on Payne — a house that no longer exists but for the memories of those who lived there. They were refugee families living on top of each other, loving each other, dreaming of the future, not knowing it would lead them all far from that house that once was.I have a book to edit, a young adult memoir titled “A Story of Our Own.” It is slated to come out next year and will be the first time I center teenage Kalia and her siblings in memoir. It is full of strife and the dramas of a heart yearning to become.
I am also embarking into adult fiction with a manuscript titled “When We Are Ghosts.” We’ll see if I close a deal on a young adult novel as well. Lots of things are next, and that makes my life unpredictable, hopeful, and fun.

Minnesota Book Awards

The Minnesota Book Award nominees for 2025 were announced on January 25. Award winners will be announced at the 2025 Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 22, at Ordway Center for Performing Arts. Congratulations to all the nominees:

Anthology, sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center:

• Dreaming our Futures: Ojibwe and Očhéthi Šakówiņ Artists and Knowledge Keepers edited by Brenda J. Child & Howard Oransky (University of Minnesota Press)* 

• Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces edited by Margret Aldrich & Michelle Filkins (Spout Press)*

• Raised by Wolves: Fifty Poets on Fifty Poems edited by Carmen Gimenez & Jeff Shotts (Graywolf Press)*

• When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology edited by Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Publishers)

Children’s Literature: 

• Mr. Fox’s Game of “No!” by David LaRochelle; illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka (Candlewick Press)

• The Rock in My Throat by Kao Kalia Yang; illustrated by Jiemei Lin (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group)*

• Snow Steps by Karen Latchana Kenney; illustrated by Irina Avgustinovich (WorthyKids/Hachette Book Group)

• What Lolo Wants by Cristina Oxtra; illustrated by Jamie Bauza (Kids Can Press)

General Nonfiction:

• The College Student’s Guide to Mental Health by Mia Nosanow (New World Library)

• The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists by Lisa Mueller (Beacon Press)

• Red Stained: The Life of Hilda Simms by Jokeda “JoJo” Bell (Minnesota Historical Society Press)* [see above]

• We Are the Evidence: A Handbook for Finding Your Way After Sexual Assault by Cheyenne Wilson (Balance/Grand Central Publishing)

Genre Fiction, sponsored by Macalester College: 

• Big in Sweden by Sally Franson (Mariner Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

• Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck (Vintage Books/Penguin Random House)

• Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon (Bantam/Penguin Random House)

• The Witches of Santo Stefano by Wendy Webb (Lake Union Publishing/Amazon Publishing)

Memoir & Creative Nonfiction:

• Perennial Ceremony: Lessons and Gifts from a Dakota Garden by Teresa Peterson (University of Minnesota Press)*

• Sticky Notes: Memorable Lessons from Ordinary Moments by Matt Eicheldinger (Andrews McMeel Publishing)

• When Skies Are Gray: A Grieving Mother’s Lullaby by Lindsey Henke (She Writes Press)

• Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life by Kao Kalia Yang (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster)

Middle Grade Literature, sponsored by Education Minnesota:

• The Diamond Explorer by Kao Kalia Yang (Dutton Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House)

• Telephone of the Tree by Alison McGhee (Rocky Pond Books/Penguin Random House)

• Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu (Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins Publishers)

• Samira’s Worst Best Summer by Nina Hamza (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction, sponsored by Annette and John Whaley:

• Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America by Sonja Trom Eayrs (Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press)

• It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom by Christopher P. Lehman (Minnesota Historical Society Press)*

• The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America by Michelle S. Phelps (Princeton University Press)

• To Banish Forever: A Secret Society, the Ho-Chunk, and Ethnic Cleansing in Minnesota by Cathy Coats (Minnesota Historical Society Press)*

Novel & Short Story, sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center:

• The French Winemaker’s Daughter by Loretta Ellsworth (Harper Paperbacks/HarperCollins Publishers)

• In Wells’ Time by David Nash (Unsolicited Press)

• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (Harper/HarperCollins Publishers)

• Obligations to the Wounded by Mubanga Kalimamukwento (University of Pittsburgh Press)

 Poetry, sponsored by Wellington Management, Inc.: 

• Bluff by Danez Smith (Graywolf Press)*

• Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali (Alice James Books)

• Birthing Butterflies by Claudia May (Finishing Line Press)

• Run From Your Now by Ben Westlie (Kelsay Books)

Young Adult Literature:

• Dispatches from Parts Unknown by Bryan Bliss (Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

• Rules for Camouflage by Kristin Cronn-Mills (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group)

• We Got the Beat by Jenna Miller (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins Publishers)

• Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer (Arthur Levine/Levine Querido)

*Indicates a Minnesota-based publisher.