Emily Henry

Emily Henry was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1991. She went to high school in Liberty Township and enrolled at Hope College on a creative writing scholarship, though she had planned to study dance. She also did a writing residency in New York through a Bethel University program. She now splits her time between Cincinnati and the Ohio River side of Northern Kentucky.

She started in YA. The Love That Split the World (2016) was her debut, followed by A Million Junes (2017), When the Sky Fell on Splendor (2019) and Hello Girls (2019), co-written with Brittany Cavallaro. Those books had one foot in the fantastic, a long way from what came next.

The turn came in 2020 with Beach Read, her first adult novel: two writers of opposite genres, neighbors in lake-town beach houses, bet on who can write in the other's style. The next year, People We Meet on Vacation followed two best friends who took a trip together every summer until a fight ended the tradition. That book won her first Goodreads Choice Award for Romance.

She took the same category with Book Lovers (2022), Happy Place (2023), Funny Story (2024) and Great Big Beautiful Life (2025). That is five years in a row. Funny Story also won the audiobook category. Great Big Beautiful Life puts two rival writers in a contest for the right to tell a reclusive heiress's life story.

What keeps readers coming back is quick humor mixed with heavier themes like grief, family and career choices. Her leads tend to work with words: novelists, editors, literary agents, travel writers. Each book stands on its own, no reading order required.

Hollywood moved fast. People We Meet on Vacation opened in January 2026, directed by Brett Haley from a script by Yulin Kuang, with Emily Bader and Tom Blyth as Poppy and Alex. Beach Read is in development at 20th Century Studios, Book Lovers with Tango, Happy Place is set as a Netflix film from Jennifer Lopez's company, and Henry plans to write the Funny Story adaptation herself.