How Emily Henry Mastered the Beach Read

The Women Who Travel Power List: Emily Henry

Welcome to our community View this email in your browser | Manage Newsletter Preferences  Introducing the Women Shaping Travel Right Now You're going to hear from us a lot more throughout March. In celebration of Women's History Month, we're spotlighting leaders in design, activism, food, storytelling, and pop culture who are pushing us forward. For all 15 women featured on this year's list, visit womenwhotravel.com. Emily Henry For bestselling novelist Emily Henry, the setting comes first. "Even before I was publishing, when I was trying to write fantasy, I would have a world that I was excited about, but like, no plot whatsoever," she says. Her days as an unpublished author are long gone of course. Henry's first adult romance novel, Beach Read, came out in 2020 and follows its romance-author protagonist in a summer bet with her hunky neighbor (a literary fiction author) to convince him of the genre's merit—a cheeky meta-commentary of sorts about her own writing. Since then, she's published at an impressively steady clip: People We Meet on Vacation in 2021; Book Lovers in 2022; and Happy Place in 2023. Her books are set in the types of places most people dream about on gray afternoons at the office: North Carolina's Smoky Mountains; the rocky coast of Maine; sun-drenched Palm Springs. If you've stepped foot in a bookstore or cast your eye down a row of hotel sun loungers recently, you've seen her impact. Henry has sold millions of copies, and at least three of her titles are contributing to Hollywood's burgeoning romcom-aissance. A midwesterner, Henry and her protagonists often share some on-paper similarities—hovering around 30, in some way connected to publishing—and her new novel, Funny Story, is set in Waning Bay, Michigan, "a fictional Traverse City." When she was writing it last year, she rented an Airbnb and "really lived there" (the real TC, that is): "There's a reference in the book that [is] based on a bait and tackle shop that is also a barber shop," says Henry, who was introduced to it by YA writer Brittany Cavallaro and then "tweaked" the details so "it's not exactly the same thing." It's a perfect illustration of how Henry lands on her locations, however fictionalized: "It has to be a place I've traveled a lot. What's drawn me there initially is just that I know people there and I [visit] them," she says. "Then they get to play tour guide." —Nora Biette-Timmons READ MORE Women Who Travel Podcast: On the Road for the US Election Women Who Travel Podcast: More Solo Travel With Jessica Nabongo Women Who Travel Podcast: A Cultural History of Eyeliner Around the World SEE ALL Don't want to receive the Powerlist Mini Series? Temporarily suspend emails from Women Who Travel until the regular monthly sends return. Snooze This e-mail was sent to you by Condé Nast Traveler. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, condenasttraveler@newsletter.cntraveler.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe | Manage Newsletter Preferences   Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.