CINCINNATI — When Emily Henry graduated from Lakota East, creative writing was a means to an end. Yes, she always liked to write. Yes, she predicted in elementary school that her future might involve creating writing (or professional basketball). But her heart was set on dance.
So she went to Hope College, a liberal arts school in Michigan, with a scholarship for creative writing and plans to study dance. When she started taking those required writing classes, though, she realized little Emily was right all along. Writing was her future.
"I had to take writing classes either every semester or every year to keep the scholarship, and I ended up really falling in love with those classes and wanting to write more and more and more," Henry said. "I didn't end up majoring in dance. I took dance all the way through school for fun, and I majored in writing."
Fast forward several years, and Henry is back in Cincinnati. She hangs out at her favorite Northside bar, attends watch parties for big Bengals games and forgets to try any new Graeter’s flavors because she’s too dedicated to black raspberry chocolate chip.
By all accounts, Henry is a typical Cincinnatian. Except her life hasn’t been so typical for the past few years.
The girl with the creative writing scholarship is now a New York Times best-selling author. She gets shout-outs from Drew Barrymore and appears on “Good Morning America” on the same day as the iconic Judy Blume. And what brought her this kind of fame and success — aside from her obvious talent — is Henry being her typical Cincinnatian self.
"I have one writer friend who, every time I'm worried something's going to be terrible, he says, 'As long as you write an Emily Henry book, it'll be fine,'" Henry said.
That kind of recognition and popularity didn't come overnight. Though she had plans for graduate school after college, Henry moved back to Cincinnati and worked a normal technical writing job.
"I don't really advise that aspiring writers get writing jobs because it uses so much of your energy," Henry said.
Despite spending her entire day writing in the least possible creative way, Henry spent time before work and on the weekends writing what she actually wanted. After finding an agent and selling her first book, she was able to make a living off of her young adult fiction.
"Most people don't have a secret in or move to New York and just, like, meet a publisher at a random event — it's not really that kind of thing," Henry said. "It's so much Googling and sending cold emails to people you've never met, and that was very much my path."
She found moderate success, but nothing like the attention Henry gained when writing something a little more personal in the adult fiction world — her first best-seller “Beach Read.” The book was a romance — nothing like the more genre-bending YA work she had done before. It also mirrored Henry’s life at the time, focusing on an author who was dealing with writer’s block (been there, done that).
"I kind of think of my main characters at this point as like time capsules," Henry said. "They're kind of dealing with what I was dealing with at a certain point in time, and they're thinking through the same things I was thinking through then."
“Beach Read” was Henry’s most popular book yet. Just like her novels that followed — which she simplifies as "sad books about funny people with happy endings" — “Beach Read” was witty and silly while still being completely earnest in its exploration of love. Readers loved it.
From there, Henry released “People We Meet on Vacation,” a novel that pays homage to one of her biggest inspirations: Nora Ephron. Her third adult fiction novel, “Book Lovers,” looked to flip a generic Hallmark storyline on its head. “Happy Place,” released in April, follows exes who must pretend to still be together for the sake of their friends.
All of the books have landed on the New York Times Best Seller list. They are dissected on BookTok, recommended by everyone you know and (perhaps most excitingly) being adapted into movies.
They also all feel familiar, thanks both to characters who hail from places like Cincinnati and conflicts that arise from very Midwestern problems like people-pleasing. That's because Henry writes what she knows.
She knows what it’s like to grow up in a smaller city and long to be somewhere bigger. She knows what it feels like to go to one’s happy place (one of hers happens to be at Lake Michigan) and escape the real world. And she knows what it’s like to ruin relationships or situations because she was just too polite to have a real argument over something important.
"It is who I know how to write really well — the people who either really love their hometowns or are itching to get out of them," Henry said. "And kind of that push and pull of belonging to a place and also feeling like you don't totally belong in a place."
Audiences know what that’s like, too. And they like reading about it.
"It's a very familiar existence to me ... and I think that weirdly Midwestern characters are somewhat unrepresented in fiction, but a huge chunk of the country can kind of relate to being from a town that the people on the coasts have never heard of," Henry said.
While she explores love — with partners, family members and oneself — in all of her stories, the changing dynamics of adult friendship are central to her latest book.
"You have friends who are parents. You have friends who are still on the dating apps trying to meet anyone. You have friends who have been doing the same job for 15 years ... your friends are doing all kinds of different things and it's no longer a relationship of convenience in most cases," Henry said. "It's something you have to really work for and fight for ... and that was something I was excited to write about because I was watching that happen."
Growing up and growing apart are difficult subjects that everyone has or will deal with, and Henry doesn't ignore them.
"I can't really shy away from the bad things in life, even when I'm trying to tell a happy story — and I think that's why they're so meaningful to me is because it's acknowledging that the bad things do keep happening, but you also can have really beautiful moments that make it all feel somewhat worth it," Henry said.
That’s Henry’s charm. She gets it and she writes about it better than any of us could even imagine.
And while she may be flying to New York for morning show appearances or signing a bazillion (official number) copies of her books for fans, Henry always comes back to Cincinnati.
"My family is here, my friends are here," Henry said. "It's a great city — it's got everything you need from a bigger city but the pace is so much slower."
This city is where she gets her bangs cut (perfectly), where she buys books that aren’t her own (at Joseph-Beth) and where her happ(iest) place is.
"My happy place," said Henry, "is honestly at home."
Find all of Henry's books, including "Happy Place," click here.
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