Events

Poet and American Book Award winner Craig Santos Perez ’02 to visit campus

Craig Santos Perez ’02 Johnston will return to campus on March 10 for a poetry reading for students, faculty and the general public.

A recent winner of the American Book Award 2015 for his book of poetry from unincorporated territory: guma’, Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from Guam who grew up in California and earned his undergraduate degree at Redlands’ Johnston Center for Integrative Studies. Santos Perez finished his doctoral degree at UC Berkeley and is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the amplified poetry audio book, Undercurrent (2011) and author of three books of poetry.

Redlands English Professor Daniel Kiefer describes his most recent book of poetry as, “a wonderful mixture of anti-colonial polemic, official documentation of the U.S. militarization of Guam, family reminiscence, and sweet sonorous lyric, in both English and Chamoru.”

Currently an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, Santos Perez teaches creative writing and Pacific literature. He also teaches in the Center of Pacific Islands Studies and the Indigenous Politics Program and co-curates the Native Voices Reading and Lecture Series, as well as the Chamorro Studies Speaker Series, and the New Oceania Literary Series.

In 2010, the Guam Legislature passed Resolution No. 315-30, recognizing and commending Santos Perez “as an accomplished poet who has been a phenomenal ambassador for our island, eloquently conveying through his words, the beauty and love that is the Chamorro culture.”

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Redlands Writing Creative Writing Department, the English Department, the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, the Chaplain's Office and Campus Diversity & Inclusion

Santos Perez will be available to meet the audience and sign books after his reading.

Hall of Letters, Room 100. Thursday March 10, 2016 at 5 p.m. Free and open to the public.