Café Soul will feature slam poet and teaching artist Giddy Perez, who will hold a workshop for performance poets looking to tackle topics surrounding diversity, social justice, and intersectionality.

Café Soul will be from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, October 20, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center. It is free and open to the public.

The annual event fuses diversity and social justice with literature and the creative arts. Through spoken word, music, and dance, students, faculty, and staff express components of their identities and celebrate their contributions to the campus community.

In addition, Diversity Advocacy is sponsoring the free workshop with Perez from 12:30-2:30 p.m. Thursday, October 20, in the Spotlight Room of the Bone Student Center. The event is also open to the public.

Perez is a full-time barber and nationally touring spoken-word poet originally from Brooklyn, New York. Some of her competition accolades include ranking 10th in the world at the Women of the World Individual Poetry Slam in 2014, and placing second with her team in 2011 and 2013 at Southern Fried Poetry Slam, the second largest poetry slam competition in the country.

In addition to performing, Perez is an active teaching artist with the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and a program director at the Gustavus Adolphus College Institute of Spoken Word and Slam Poetry, an annual writing summer camp for high school students.

For additional information, call Diversity Advocacy at (309) 438-8968 or email.