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Juan Manuel Pérez is an award-winning Mexican-American & Indigenous poet, Gulf War (1991) veteran, actor, former Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi (2019-2020), and author of multiple books. In this interview, Juan spoke about his poetry and writing being grounded in his childhood growing up as a migrant farm worker and his experience learning to speak English from comic books in the 2nd grade. He described the evolution of his writing process from journaling his thoughts to his own self-taught exploration…

We’re excited to introduce our first featured Islander poet to kick-off our month-long series, faculty member J.L. Wright. She began writing poetry as a young girl, publishing her first poem in the local newspaper at age 10. She has since written three poetry collections, Unadoptable Joy, Homeless Joy, and Unsettled Joy.   In this interview, she spoke about themes present in her three published poetry collections, the origin of poetry and its role as the “voice of the common man,” the importance of persisting during often-grueling submission…