Jared Morningstar

Morningstar is a teacher at the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy (SASA), where he has taught English Language Arts to gifted and talented 9th and 10th grade students since 2008. He also taught at Saginaw Valley State University and Delta College as an adjunct English professor for several years. In 2012, he was one of 14 teachers in the nation to be named a High School Teacher of Excellence by the National Council of Teachers of English. In that same year, he was named Michigan’s High School English Teacher of the Year and Michigan’s Creative Writing Teacher of the Year (Touchstone Award) by the Michigan Council of Teachers of English. Over the years, dozens of his creative writing students have won national and state level awards for their poetry and fiction, and several have had their works honored at Carnegie Hall as Scholastic Writing Award National Medalists. In addition to his teaching duties at SASA, he spent many years as the school’s Model UN advisor, writing editor for the school’s national-award winning annual publication of original student art and writing (ICONS), organizer of SASA’s annual high school winter holiday celebration, and member of the school improvement leadership team. Morningstar was also an adjunct professor for SVSU and Delta College for several years. Morningstar has led multiple community creative writing workshops in coordination with the Theodore Roethke House and participated as a member of the planning committee for the 2018 Roethke Art and Poetry Festival. He has had four books of poems and short stories published by Alien Buddha Press, which nominated one of his stories for the Pushcart Prize in 2020. Several of his stories and poems have been published in various literary journals, such as Culture Cult Magazine, Rust Belt Review, Qua, Still Life, and Cardinal Sins. He was also the editor of Young Voices, an international anthology of youth fiction (Culture Cult Press). In 2024, after years of working/volunteering for the organization, Morningstar was named to the Friends of Roethke’s Board of Directors. In March of 2022, he was given Saginaw Valley State University’s College of Education Distinguished Alumni Award. Finally, because of his contributions to the arts and arts education, Morningstar was commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel in April of 2023. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree (English/Creative Writing) and Teacher Certification at Saginaw Valley State University and his Master’s Degree (English Language and Literature) at the University of Michigan: Flint.