Cline, born in 1989, was raised in Sonoma County, California.[6] She was the second of seven children in her family.[7] After graduating from Sonoma Academy, at age 16, Cline attended Middlebury College, where she studied art.[7] During her first year there, she won a writing award for her short story, "What is Lost".[3] After graduating, Cline attended Columbia University, where she received her MFA in 2013.[3] While at Columbia, she wrote "Marion", a short piece of fiction, which was published by The Paris Review in their Summer 2013 issue. A year later, The Paris Review awarded Cline the Plimpton Prize for the story.[8] Since then, her writing has been published in multiple journals.[9]
The Girls
Cline speaks about The Girls in 2016
Cline's first novel, The Girls, was published in 2016 by Random House Publishing.[9] She was offered a $2 million advance by Random House, who outbid 11 other publishers for the novel.[10] American film producer Scott Rudin bought the film rights to the book, shortly before it was acquired by Random House.[11] The novel is based, in part, on the Charles Manson cult and murders of the late 1960s. The story is told from the view point of Evie Boyd, a fourteen-year-old girl, whose childhood is changed when she is introduced to a cult. As an adult, Evie reflects on her actions, as a child, bringing up questions of what it means to grow up as a girl and how injustice, in the world, can lead to terrible violence.[9] While Cline is celebrated for her descriptive abilities and attention to gender structures, critics have also said that the cult setting seemed unnecessary to the novel and left the ending feeling unfulfilled.[9] Still, the book was well received by the general public, and The Girls spent three months on The New York Times Best Seller list.[6] It won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel.[12] The movie production for the novel is in the development stages.
In May 2023, an exclusive excerpt from Cline's second novel The Guest appeared in Vogue.[15] The book was published by Random House on May 16, 2023.[16]The New York Times wrote that the novel "could be read as an entertaining series of misguided shenanigans interrupting the upper class’s summer vacation, but under Cline’s command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force".[17] She has said that part of it was inspired by John Cheever's short story "The Swimmer."[18]The Guest was a national bestseller and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
In February 2017, Cline's former boyfriend Chaz Reetz-Laiolo made plagiarism accusations against Cline that were ultimately dismissed by a judge. Reetz-Laiolo said Cline installed a spyware program on his computer in order to read his personal work and emails without his consent. He demanded reparations and threatened to put forth a public court filing that included sexually explicit images and text messages of Emma Cline.[6][20] Cline put forth a countersuit, arguing that the spyware was for her own protection because Reetz-Laiolo had been physically and emotionally abusive, and that the similarities between Reetz-Laito's work and The Girls was minimal.[20][6] Random House issued a statement in support of Cline.[6] In June 2018, the copyright claim was dismissed with prejudice by Judge William Orrick, who said, "Both stories are ‘coming of age’ tales of sorts. But they vary significantly in detail, breadth and texture" and called the behavior of Reetz-Laiolo's lawyers "remarkably offensive."[21]
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