Jason Magabo Perez serves as San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24. Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016), This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017), and I ask about what falls away (Kaya Press, 2024). Perez has also written and performed three staged multimedia performance works: The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito (KULARTS, 2009); You Will Gonna Go Crazy (KULARTS, 2011); and Blue Bin Improvisations: Performing Yonie’s Archive (MexiCali Biennial & Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 2018). Blending poetry, prose, performance, film/video, and oral history, Perez’s body of work explores anti-colonial Filipino American historiographies, intimacies, and solidarities. Perez’s writing has appeared in publications such as Interim, Witness, The Feminist Wire, Marías at Sampaguitas, TLDTD Journal, Kalfou, The Operating System, San Diego Union-Tribune, Academy of American Poets, and NPR’s Here & Now. Recipient of a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Perez has been a Featured Artist at New Americans Museum, Community Scholar-in-Residence at the San Diego Public Library, and Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Art and Thought (CA+T). Perez has performed at notable venues such as the National Asian American Theater Festival, International Conference of the Philippines, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Asian Art Museum, Sunshine Brooks Theater, and La Jolla Playhouse. A VONA Writing Workshops alumnus, Perez holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Consciousness from New College of California and a dual Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and Communication from University of California, San Diego. Current Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets, Perez works as Associate Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies at California State University San Marcos, Associate Editor at Ethnic Studies Review, and is a core organizer with The Digital Sala.
