Jeff Kass

In True Believer, Jeff Kass intertwines fiction with reality as he delves into the origins of the Marvel superheroes, explores how the Marvel saga informed his own worldview, and implores us all to continue to believe in the forces of goodThrough lyric and narrative poems, formal and informal verse, and even a trio of limericks, Kass’s poems both retell classic comic book tales and recall his personal experiences being a True Believer—attending New York City Comic-Con with his childhood friends, wishing he could control the weather while coaching his son’s baseball team, and growing up reading about the Jewishness of The Thing, the Golem-like member of The Fantastic Four, which impacted Kass’s understanding of his own identity. An ode to what Stan Lee called his devoted readers, True Believer is a call to arms and an invitation to discover the heroic in ourselves. If we can’t be super-powered heroes, we can endeavor to be what those heroes embody: perseverance despite personal doubt, determination in the face of calamitous odds, and faith in the notion that humanity is worth saving.

Teacher/Pizza Guy is a collection of autobiographical poems from the 2016-17 school year in which Jeff Kass worked as a full-time English teacher and a part-time director for a literary arts organization and still had to supplement his income by delivering pizzas a few nights a week. In the collection, Kass is unapologetically political without distracting from the poems themselves but rather adds layers and nuances to the fight for the middle class and for educators as a profession. The timing of this book is beyond relevant. As a public high school teacher in America, Kass's situation is not uncommon. In September 2018, Time published an article detailing the ways in which many public school teachers across the country and in a variety of environments work multiple jobs to help make ends meet. Teacher/Pizza Guy chronicles Kass's experience of teaching, directing, feeding people, and treading the delicate balance of holding himself accountable to his wife and kids, his students, his customers, and his own mental and physical health while working three jobs in contemporary America. The journey of that year was draining, at times daunting, at times satisfying, but always surprising. Many of the ideas for these poems were initially scribbled onto the backs of pizza receipts or scratched out during precious free moments amidst the chaos of the school day. A driving force behind the book is Philip Levine's poem ""What Work Is,"" which Kass believes attempts to examine not only the dignity and complexity of what we think physical, tangible work is but also the exhausting, albeit sometimes fulfilling nature of emotional work. Teacher/Pizza Guy is a funny and relatable collection for readers, thinkers, educators, and pizza lovers everywhere.

It's hard to be a teacher. Hard to be a father. Harder still to be a husband. How do you survive? You look for joy everywhere you can. You write poems about those moments to keep them alive in your breast. These poems represent hope for a better tomorrow.

Ten years after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve classmates and a teacher, Columbine remains the world's most iconic school shooting. Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers and the nation's search for answers is the first book of investigative journalism to tell the complete story of that day, the far-reaching consequences, and the common denominators among school shooters across the country. Jeff Kass was one of the first reporters on the scene and has continued to cover the story as a staff writer for Denver's Rocky Mountain News. He has broken national stories on the shootings such as leaked crime scene photos, and the sealed diversion files of the killers. He has also reported the story extensively for the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, and U. S. News & World Report. The result of ten years of research and exclusive information, the book reaches into fundamental American themes of violence, racism, parenting and policing. Concluding with the tale of the tattered police investigation and how one of the most controversial victims' families faces down a modern American tragedy as the cameras roll, Columbine: A True Crime Story is a classic in the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song. Foreword by noted historian Douglas Brinkley, exclusive cover art by renowned artist and cultural commentator Ralph Steadman, and photos from the archives of the Rocky Mountain News, which won the Pulitzer for its Columbine photography.