Elizabeth Pérez (she/her) is a writer and an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

As the daughter of Cuban immigrants, poetry is her first language.

Last year (2024), she was named one of fifteen finalists for the inaugural Cardinal Poetry Prize, judged by Robert Pinsky and sponsored by Wesleyan University Press. The unpublished manuscript submitted for the Prize was entitled, “Lessons in Cuban Cosmology: Fifty-Two Poems & a Villanelle.” In 2025, she completed a VONA residency in lyric poetry and was named as a finalist for three prizes: Gunpowder Press's Alta California Chapbook Prize, for her submission _Refugee Lotteries_; Palette Poetry's Nature Poetry Prize, for the poem "Butterflies"; and Black Warrior Review's Fiction Contest, for her short story, "Courtship among the Peoples of Eastern Cuba."

Her poetry has appeared in two edited volumes and several journals, most recently Chicana/Latina Studies and Meridians.

As a scholar—and profesora to her students—Pérez specializes in Black Atlantic traditions and LGBTQ spirituality. She is the author of two award-winning scholarly books on Afro-Caribbean religions based on ethnographic and historical research.