Jenna Schnuer

American Way: Social MediaOctober 1, 2009

It started with the oversharing. Some of Sarah Schmelling’s friends were offering a little too much information in their Facebook status updates. Late one night, she began to think about the craziest thing she could imagine in a status update, and that’s when the former English major’s brain tumbled to Hamlet’s beloved Ophelia and what she might write as she was losing her mind. Now we can all know the answer, as Schmelling’s new book, Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook (Plume, $15), hits bookshelves. In her debut novel, she brings a slew of classic literary characters and their creators to (online) life.

Read the interview. 

Women's Health: The Big EasyJune 2007

I researched and wrote 10 of the items that went into a special section of ideas and products to help readers live (work and play) easy this summer.

American Way: Secret ServiceApril 15, 2007

Every Sunday, 43-year-old Frank Warren of Germantown, Maryland, sorts through hundreds of homemade postcards that complete strangers have mailed to him. He chooses about 20 and posts them on his website, PostSecret.com. Each contains one secret and usually some artwork. No name is attached. Some of the secrets are sweet or funny, but many of them are of the deep, dark variety that people dread, revealing everything from thoughts of suicide to admissions of marital infidelity.

American Way: What's in Store?July 1, 2006

Though a day at the mall might forever leave some shoppers gasping for breath, the ka-ching of cash registers is heralding an experience with less stress--and more success--for most consumers in the near future. "I think we're in a transition now where the consumer is gathering more and more power," says Pat Conroy, vice chairman of the consumer business practive for Deloitte & Touche USA.

Interested in reprinting the story? Send me an email.

American Way: Fill in the BlankJune 15, 2006

There was all this empty space. Floors. Walls. The whole shebang. After 11 years in a (very) small Manhattan apartment, I had moved out to an outer borough and was now the proud renter of about 800 square feet of space. (I know, those of you outside the five boroughs are snickering over my idea of "space.")

Then the reading began.

It started with Apartment Therapy, and then a design*sponge grabbed hold, and then Treehugger, and it just kept going from there. I had become obsessed with the ever-expanding world of design blogs. All day long--though I had to take the occasional break to get some work done--I cruised the blogs, eager to see what these design-savvy folks had found. I fell for chairs. I found artists who could fill my wall space on the cheap. I was on the hunt for the perfect end table. Design magazines started to seem so…static. They didn't deliver the goods from morning until night. I wanted a personal design shopper--and now, thanks to the bloggers, I had an army of them.

USA Weekend: Your family's story can make (oral) historyFebruary 29, 2004

A new national project encourages you to get nosy with your family. The story of the woman who raised your mom or how your dad grew up in a small town could end up at the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C.