Pj Perez is a writer, illustrator, musician, filmmaker and entrepreneur whose work you may or may not have seen in various publications, websites or comic book stores over the last [REDACTED] years. He is currently the principal of PKWY Media, an independent film production studio based in Southern California, whose projects include the now-in-production documentary Murdered on the Fourth of July.
Beginning in his teens, Perez embedded himself in and around the creative culture of Las Vegas, starting with performing poetry and music in the 1990s coffeehouse scene, which led to stints as a record label owner, publisher, publicist, music producer, graphic designer, web developer, playwright, actor, editor, and, most prominently, contributing writer to a number of local and national publications, including Rolling Stone, ART + Living, Las Vegas CityLife, Las Vegas Mercury, Scope, Las Vegas Weekly, Vegas Seven and much more.
From the mid-1990s through early 2000s, Perez developed several independent and underground publications, including Five/One Magazine, a ‘zine for Las Vegas culture that ran irregularly from 1995 to 1999, and the website indieVegas.com, launched in July 2000 as a virtual connecting point for Vegas music, arts, activism, culture and more.
In 2001, Perez began writing regularly for the Las Vegas CityLife, developing new stories for various sections of the weekly paper, especially arts and entertainment. It was during that tenure that Perez established himself as an authority on music and art in Las Vegas, and in the local music column he helped establish, Perez wrote the first published profile of a then little-known band called The Killers in 2002.
After three years in the masthead at CityLife, Perez joined the content team at VEGAS.com, and concurrently began contributing to the Las Vegas Weekly, where he co-launched the local music column “Loud!” and continued to report on music, entertainment and culture. As senior content developer at VEGAS.com, Perez regularly contributed entertainment previews and reviews to the website, as well as writing and editing content for nightclubs, gay clubs and bars.
In late 2006, Perez left VEGAS.com to helm the new monthly independent lifestyle magazine from Wendoh Media, Racket. At the end of 2007, while Racket was on hiatus, he launched the entertainment and gossip blog DailyFiasco.com for Wendoh before leaving the company to lead web content and social media initiatives for the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, where Perez won PRSA Pinnacle Awards six years in a row for his internet marketing and community building work.
Perez started writing and drawing a weekly webcomic, The Utopian, in 2009, which was collected in print throughout 2009 and 2010, and which led to the creation of Pop! Goes the Icon, a boutique publisher of comics and illustrated books. A sequel to The Utopian launched in 2012, and ran intermittently for six years, also collected in print in 2018.
In 2013, Perez left the Preserve to focus on comics publishing, filmmaking, illustration, freelance writing (mainly for Vegas Seven, DTLV.com, and Desert Companion), and a new venture called Creation Forge Studios, a digital printing and design agency. For his DTLV.com real estate column, “Urb Appeal,” Perez won a Nevada Press Association Better Newspaper Contest award in 2014.
After closing Creation Forge Studios, Perez returned to the world of digital marketing as the manager of web & digital content at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, where he developed and launched the lifestyle, entertainment and dining blog, 52 Stories, which won a 2018 Bronze Addy Award from the Las Vegas chapter of the American Advertising Foundation.
In 2017, Perez relocated to Southern California, shifting his focus toward filmmaking projects. His debut feature-length film, the documentary Parkway of Broken Dreams, premiered in 2021, winning several film festival awards and is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Tubi, Xumo, PBS, and more. His television pilot script for the original series The Foundation was a finalist in the 27th annual People’s Pilot contest, and he recently started production on a new documentary feature, Murdered on the Fourth of July, about the July 4, 1998 killing of Lin “Spit” Newborn and Daniel Shersty by neo-Nazi skinheads.
Perez has been tapped by broadcast and print media for his unique takes on Sin City in such outlets as National Geographic Traveler, BBC Radio 1 and Hot Press. He has also extended his expertise with contributions to Time Out Las Vegas, Zagat Survey and American Express Travel.