Featured Mentor: Jeff Kass

We are excited to announce our featured mentor of the week: Jeff Kass! Jeff Kass teaches Tenth Grade English and Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. A former champion of numerous Poetry Slams, he’s the award-winning author of two full-length poetry collections, My Beautiful Hook-nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave and Teacher/Pizza Guy, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book; the thriller Takedown, the YA novel Center-Mid, and Knuckleheads, Independent Publishers Gold-medal winning Best Short Fiction Collection of 2011. He has taught poetry classes and workshops to thousands of students across the United States and is a recipient of a prestigious 2023 Jack Hazard Fellowship for writers who teach in public schools. His newest poetry collection True Believer is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in December of 2024.

“What excites me most about the Dzanc mentorship program is the opportunity to meet new writers and experience their work-in-progress,” Jeff shared. “I love the stage of creation when writers are just trying to bring their work into the world and it's exciting to help them try to move their visions forward.”

A recent read that Jeff loved is The Limitless Heart: New and Selected Poems by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor. He says, “Cheryl is a former classmate of mine in the Stonecoast MFA program. She is a bold and beautiful writer and the book is a heartbreaking tribute to her late son, the rapper Phife Dawg from A Tribe Called Quest.”

Click here to sign up for a mentorship from Jeff!

And check out both Jeff’s unique poetry collection, My Beautiful Hook-nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave and compelling short story collection, Knuckleheads.