SAN MARCOS — A Cal State San Marcos professor has been awarded a prestigious $50,000 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Jason Magabo Perez, an associate professor and director of ethnic studies entering his fifth year at the university, was one of 23 individuals selected last week for the nationwide fellowship. He was selected in January as San Diego’s 2023-24 poet laureate.
“I am grateful for the affirmation and honored by the support and encouragement from the Academy of American Poets in helping us continue to build upon the empowering histories and brilliant communities of poetry and art in San Diego,” Perez said. “I look forward to dreaming up possibilities for such work in San Diego, at CSUSM, and beyond.”
During his fellowship, Perez will launch a youth empowerment poetry project focused on poetry, performance-making and video art in collaboration with San Diego-based Pacific Arts Movement and local high school ethnic studies and English teachers.
Ultimately, Perez plans to develop open-access curricula and grassroots publishing initiatives culminating in a youth poetry summit in San Diego.
In addition to being a poet and educator, Perez’s accolades include essayist, performer, fiction writer and community organizer. He has used these mediums, in addition to film and video, ethnography and oral history, to explore experiences past, present and future of Filipino American communities.
He captures these and other topics in his 2017 full-length poetry and prose collection, “This is for the Mostless.”
Perez is also a community arts fellow for the UC Davis Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies.