Originally from New York, James Kass, is the Founder and Executive Director of Youth Speaks. Since 1996, Youth Speaks has set a national standard for creative writing, poetry, and spoken word programs for youth. James has facilitated workshops in over 350 high schools, numerous universities, public library systems, juvenile detention centers, and youth service agencies throughout the extensive international Youth Speaks/Brave New Voices network. Executive Editor of First Word Press, and creator of the annual Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam, Spoken City, Brave New Voices, and the Bringing the Noise reading series, James also coordinated the Youth Stage at the now-defunct San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival. James is a founding member of the San Francisco Poet Laureate Executive Committee, and has been a panelist for the California Arts Council Spoken Word Fellowship, The Oakland Creative Arts Spoken Word Fellowship and the San Francisco Arts Commission Creative Space Award. James sits on the Steering Committee for the Oakland International Hip Hop Museum (On Up), Chairs the Community Engagement Advisory Board for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is an Advisory Board Member for SlamBush.net, and the NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival, is a Board Member of CAS, a small school at Berkeley High, Speak Out, a progressive national speakers bureau, and Youth Sounds, the nation’s premiere youth media program, teaches classes at the California College of Arts, and has partnered with The New York City Hip Hop Theater Festival to develop a festival in the Bay Area.

James has spoken on numerous panels, including at the New Progressive Coalition, the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, the Social Venture Network, Changemakers, Hip Hop Activism, the Open Society Institute, and Grantmakers in the Arts, and has published numerous articles on youth, poetry, spoken word, and education. Through his work with Youth Speaks, he ahs raised over 10 million dollars toward the development of a national movement of brave new voices bringing the noise from the margin to the core.

Winner of a 1997 Bay Guardian Fiction Award and a 1999 Poetry Award, among many other awards for his writing, James was a 1996 San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, has had his own work, both fiction and poetry, published in numerous journals and publications and performed nationwide from the Nuyorican to San Francisco’s Fillmore. As part of his work, James also created and still chairs Brave New Voices, the International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, which is hosted in a different American city each year, and has overseen the development of Youth Speaks chapters and affiliate programs nationwide, including in NY, Seattle, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Honolulu, and Madison, WI. He served as the Poetry Advisor and an Executive Producer for the award-winning documentary film Poetic License, which aired nationwide on PBS stations, was the Casting Director for a national anti-substance abuse Spoken Word PSA Program, is an Executive Producer of a forthcoming Documentary series on youth and spoken word on HBO, serves as Youth Casting Director for HBO’s Def Poetry, and is a recipient of the prestigious Northern California Creative Work Fund Arts Grant, with which he wrote and starred in No Man’s Land with Paul Flores, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Beau Sia. James has also received awards and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, the Gerbode Foundation, amongst others, and has been recognized by San Francisco State University on three occasions for his work serving the arts. James was also recognized by the Ford Foundation as a Future Aesthetic artist and presenter as part of a national hip-hop generation movement. He has been featured in media across the nation, including Poets & Writers, the New York Times, Seventeen Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, ABC, Nightline, Source, Vibe and National Public Radio. James founded Youth Speaks while a graduate student in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. He is currently working on a memoir about Youth Speaks.