Award-winning poet Dr. Craig Santos Perez, an indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) author from the Pacific Island of Guam, will read from his work at 6:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, November 4 via Zoom Webinar. Joining him will be Paige Allen, Lucy Chuang, Maya Eashwaran, Vail Linn, and Hannah Wang – five seniors in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing who will be reading from their recent work. This event continues the 2020-21 C.K. Williams Reading Series, named after the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet C.K. Williams, who also served on Princeton’s faculty for 20 years. This virtual event, presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts, is free and open to the public.
The series showcases senior thesis students of the Program in Creative Writing alongside established writers as special guests.
Dr. Craig Santos Perez, award-winning indigenous Chamoru poet from the Pacific Island of Guam. Photo credit: Hannah Ensor
Dr. Craig Santos Perez is the author of five poetry books including from unincorporated territory [hacha] (2008), from unincorporated territory [saina] (2010), from unincorporated territory [guma’] (2014), from unincorporated territory [lukao] (2017), and Habitat Threshold (2020), and two spoken word poetry albums, Undercurrent (2011) and Crosscurrent (2017). He is the co-founder of Ala Press (the only publisher in the U.S. dedicated to Pacific literature) and the co-editor of five anthologies of Pacific literature and eco-literature: Chamoru Childhood (2008), Home(is)lands: New Art and Writing from Guahan and Hawaiʻi (2018), Effigies III: Indigenous Pacific Islander Poetry (2019), Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia (2019), and Geopoetics in Practice (2020). He has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2010) and the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry (2019), and he has received the Pen Center USA/Poetry Society of America Literary Prize (2011), the American Book Award (2015), the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship (2016), and the Hawai’i Literary Arts Council Elliot Cades Literary Award (2017), the most prestigious literary prize in Hawai’i. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco and a Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. In 2010, the Guam Legislature passed a resolution 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.”
The five seniors, who are pursuing certificates in creative writing in addition to their major areas of study, will read from their senior thesis projects. They are among 24 Princeton seniors who are pursuing certificates in creative writing in addition to their major areas of study. Each is currently working on a novel, a screenplay, translations, or a collection of poems or short stories as part of a creative thesis for the certificate. Thesis students in the Program in Creative Writing work closely with a member of the faculty, which includes award-winning writers Michael Dickman, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Daphne Kalotay, Christina Lazaridi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Susan Wheeler, Monica Youn, and a number of distinguished lecturers.
Upcoming guests in the 2020-21 C.K. Williams Series include Ottessa Moshfegh, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Franny Choi.
On November 17 at 5:00 p.m. EST via Zoom students in the Program in Creative Writing will read from work written during fall semester workshops selected by faculty. In the spring all the seniors in the program will read from their final thesis works.
Patrons in need of access accommodations in order to participate in this event are asked to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least two weeks in advance of the event date.
To learn more about the reading series, the Program in Creative Writing, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, most of them free, visit arts.princeton.edu.
