Craig Santos Perez will give a Zoom reading on April 20 at 7 p.m. as part of Virginia Tech’s Visiting Writers Series.

Perez is a professor in the English Department at the University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa, where he teaches creative writing, eco-poetry, and Pacific literature. He is affiliate faculty with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies and the Indigenous Politics Program.

Perez is the author of two spoken word poetry albums, “Undercurrent” and “Crosscurrent.” His five books of poetry include: “From Unincorporated Territory [hacha],” “From Unincorporated Territory [saina],” “From Unincorporated Territory [guma’],” “From Unincorporated Territory [lukao],” and “Habitat Threshold.” His work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French, and Spanish.

He received the Pen Center USA/Poetry Society of America Literary Prize in 2011, the American Book Award in 2015, the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship in 2016, the Hawai’i Literary Arts Council Award for an Established Artist in 2017, and a gold medal Nautilus Book Award in 2021. He has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Book Prize, and was long listed for a PEN America Literary Award.

The event is sponsored by the Virginia Tech Visiting Writers Series and by the Asian Cultural Engagement Center. Click here to view the reading.