Emily Henry is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of six adult romance novels — and one of the most widely read voices in contemporary fiction today. Born on May 17, 1991, she grew up with a childhood split between Northern Kentucky and Liberty Township, Ohio, where she attended Lakota East High School. She went on to study creative writing at Hope College in Michigan on a scholarship — originally intending to study dance — and later completed a writing residency at the New York Center for Art & Media Studies. She returned to the Cincinnati area after college and has lived and written there ever since, in what she describes as her adopted city and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.

Before her breakout as a romance novelist, Henry published three young adult novels — beginning with The Love That Split the World (2016), followed by A Million Junes (2017) and When the Sky Fell on Splendor (2019). Her YA work drew comparisons to Maggie Stiefvater and Alice Hoffman for its lyrical prose and magical realism, and built the devoted readership that would carry her into her next chapter.

That chapter arrived in 2020 with Beach Read, her first adult novel — a self-aware romance about two rival writers daring each other to swap genres over a summer at the lake. Published during the pandemic, it became an instant phenomenon, winning the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance and launching Henry to international acclaim. It was the first of six consecutive adult novels to hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Her second adult novel, People We Meet on Vacation (2021), followed two best friends across a decade of annual trips and the slow-burn romantic tension simmering beneath them. It won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance in 2021 and cemented Henry's reputation for writing relationships with unusual emotional precision. Book Lovers (2022) — a love letter to the publishing world and the people who live inside it — won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance for a third consecutive year, a remarkable feat. Happy Place (2023) followed a couple who had quietly broken up but agreed to pretend otherwise for one last vacation with their closest friends.

Funny Story (2024) brought a new level of wit and heat to her work, following two people whose exes fell for each other — leaving them unlikely roommates in a lakeside Michigan town. TIME called Henry "a rising-star writer of literary romance" whose work consistently finds "innovative ways to subvert tropes of the genre." Her sixth and most recent adult novel, Great Big Beautiful Life (2025), was selected as a Reese's Book Club pick and is described as her most vulnerable and emotionally ambitious work yet.

Henry is one of the defining forces behind the resurgence of literary romance as a genre taken seriously by mainstream critics and readers alike. Her books have been praised by outlets including NPR, The Washington Post, TIME, People, and the Associated Press, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. She remains a full-time writer based in Cincinnati — a city she has described as central to her creative identity — and continues to be one of the most-anticipated names in contemporary fiction.

Born: May 17, 1991

Birthplace: Cincinnati, OH