Bio

Photo Credit: Harrison Jones (2020)

Short version:

Jared Reck lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two daughters. He teaches 8th grade Language Arts, where he has been reading awesome books and writing alongside his students for more than fifteen years. He is the author of DONUTS AND OTHER PROCLAMATIONS OF LOVE and A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GIRL NEXT DOOR.


Longer Version:

The truth is, I wouldn't be a writer if I hadn't first been a teacher. It just wouldn't have happened. In my classroom is where I fell in love with YA lit, devouring Crutcher and Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green and Sara Zarr and A.S. King, right alongside my students. And it was with these same students that I learned how published writers write, soaking in the lessons of Nancie Atwell's Writing Workshop and trying them out with my students. If I hadn't spent those years playing with memoir and poetry and short fiction in front of my students, I'd have never even considered attempting a novel.

I'm glad I did.

I grew up in Hanover, Pennsylvania, the youngest son of two teachers who taught me to love laughter and to love stories. In elementary school, I checked out Dr. Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say? about a bajillion times from the school library—even when I was clearly too old to be perusing the blue-dot section—just to hear my dad try to get through "Pete Pats Pigs" without tripping up, then to hear him belly-laugh when he inevitably would.

I attended Clemson University, first for architecture, then fine arts, and finally received a B.A. in English, with hopes of writing and illustrating picture books (though I was too scared to ever submit anything). After a short time as a production editor for medical journals, I went back for my teaching certification, which is one of the best decisions I've ever made. Since then, I've received a Masters in Educational Leadership from Shippensburg University, and I've completed graduate coursework in McDaniel College's Writing for Children and Young Adults Program, where I'm also currently a professor. 

You can still find me in Hanover, probably having early-morning breakfast with my dad before school.