About the Author

Jenna's love for reading started in the days of flashlights under the covers after lights-out, with Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, and Judith Viorst as some of her earliest role models. After Jenna gave a spirited reading of a book she wrote about pigs' and sheep's springtime adventures (with an original song that may have featured the word "exuberance"), her first-grade teacher wrote on her report card, "I expect to see her name on the New York Times bestseller list one day."

 

She began writing professionally soon after graduating from Boston University (with honors, like a show-off). She won a couple of screenwriting contests right off the bat, but found that selling a script wasn't the same as getting it produced, and that got a little old— so she switched to books and articles, where she's been comfortably settled in ever since.

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After writing a few books of her own, Jenna was asked to ghostwrite a celebrity memoir and found she loved the collaborative process. Her ghostwriting and editing work has taken her to fascinating places, from Celine Dion's dressing room in Vegas to the Glamour Women of the Year Awards to backstage on Broadway. She's worked with actors, singers, athletes, CEOs, a model, a news anchor, an Army colonel, doctors and psychologists, reality TV stars, and a bunch of "ordinary" people with extraordinary stories to tell. All in all, she's now written more than 35 books for all five of the "Big Five" publishers and several independent publishers. Don't ask which is her favorite because the answer is all of them. ALL OF THEM. Except that one. Shhh.

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They run the gamut: memoirs and biographies, health books, business books, true crime, self-help, education, career, and parenting. Not all of her ghostwriting carries her byline, so if you read a book you like, you can pretend she wrote it. (If you didn't like it, no way did she write it. Ptooey.)

 

She also loves writing for children and young adults, both for the educational market and for entertainment. This started when she answered an ad on Craigslist about 25 years ago (imagine? Craigslist!) seeking writers for a series of books for fourth graders. Since then, she's written and edited several picture books, a YA memoir, games, and content for a children's app.

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Then there are the magazines, newspapers, and online publications: She's written articles for dozens of them, such as The Washington Post, the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Parents, Inc., Popular Science, Bezzy, USA Today, Healthline, Huffington Post, Mic, MSN, Ravishly, Woman's World, Prevention, Salon, Bella, Chicago Tribune, and many others, including a stint as a contributing editor at Writer's Digest. She's also taught writing at the Omega Institute and been a judge for Writer's Digest's writing competitions.

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As a devoted lifelong learner, she's currently working toward a master's degree online through Harvard. 

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Jenna is a single mom in New York with one wonderful college-age daughter with whom she collaborates whenever it makes sense. Neither of them ever says "whom" in real life. 

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Her books have won multiple awards and been translated into many languages. One was adapted to a Lifetime movie. 

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You may have spotted her in Celine Dion documentaries and seen her interviewed on talk shows, and she was profiled in Writer's Market as one of the country's top freelance writers. Her head even made an appearance on a Times Square billboard. 

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(Proof:)