THE GIRLS (EMMA CLINE)

A Fresh Novel from a Young Author *(Originally published on my blog, 2016)

Emma Cline—27-year-old writer from San Francisco, CA—published her debut novel, The Girls, about the Manson family girls, in June, 2016, for a rumored $2 million advance, three book deal, and having sold the film rights. All with Random House.

The massive sale is part of a larger emerging [inner circle] status quo of debut literary novels like Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s 2011 debut, “The Language of Flowers,” Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s “The Nest,” “City on Fire,” by first-time novelist Garth Risk Hallberg, and Bill Clegg’s “Did You Ever Have A Family,” among others.

Cline had only published some personal essays and a few short stories prior to landing her book deal, one with Tin House and another with the Paris Review. She snagged her MFA from Columbia and became a reader for The New Yorker. Soon she signed on with NYT bestselling author and literary agent, Bill Clegg.

I actually met Cline randomly on a visit to New York back in mid March. My girlfriend and I were staying in Brooklyn before heading off to Berlin. I’d walked into a coffee shop one morning to read Harper’s and sip tea, when I saw the pale, attractive young woman waltz in, sit, and talk to a young man about her book. Being both a writer and book editor, I slid over and handed her my card, telling her I was an editor. She smiled politely, telling me she already had an editor and that her book was forthcoming in June. I asked her name and she complied.