The Kansas City Public Library and the University of Missouri-Kansas City named poet Threa Almontaser as the winner of the first annual Maya Angelou Book Award on October 20, 2021. She was honored for her debut collection, The Wild Fox of Yemen. The Library, UMKC, and five other Missouri universities established the national award, which recognizes literary merit, how a writer and their work reflect a commitment to social justice, and how the work “serves to enrich the diversity of American literature.”