Emily Giffin


Emily Fisk Giffin is an American author of several novels commonly categorized as chick lit.
Her best known works are Something Borrowed, Heart of the Matter and The One and Only.

Early life

Emily Giffin was born on March 20, 1972. She attended Naperville North High School in Naperville, Illinois, where she was a member of a creative writing club and served as editor-in-chief for the school's newspaper. Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she double majored in history and English and also served as manager of the basketball team. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia.

Career

After graduating from law school in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full-time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers. Giffin began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.
Giffin found an agent in 2002 and signed a two book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue. Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. She spent 2007 finishing her fourth novel, Love the One You're With.
All nine of her novels have been international bestsellers. Three appeared simultaneously on USA Today's Top 150 list. Something Borrowed was adapted into a major feature film, and its sequel novel Something Blue has also been optioned for film.
In May 2020, Emily Giffin publicly criticized Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on Instagram, where she captioned a screenshot of a video of Meghan Markle reading to her son Archie on the occasion of his first birthday, in support of Save the Children with “Happy Birthday, Archie. Go away, Megan”. Giffin went on to write “Holy ‘me first.’ This is the Megan show. Why didn’t she film and let Harry read? And why didn’t she take the moment at the end to say ‘he said daddy!' Because that would make it about Harry for a split second, God forbid. Also, you want privacy for your child so you put out a video of him.... wearing no pants?! Ooookay....”. Giffin also posted screenshots of text message exchanges where she continued to criticize Meghan as "un-maternal" and "phony". Ensuing backlash from the public, including calls to boycott her books, over her criticism resulted in a response from Giffin where she apologized and denied any racial motivation behind her comments. In her Instagram-posted apology, Giffin stated that she "absolutely loved that a biracial, American woman was marrying into the Royal Family", had been "appalled by any signs of racism against her", and had only found fault in the manner in which Meghan and Harry had left the monarchy.

Novels