Emma Cline is an American novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 2016 debut novel, The Girls, which was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Cline's work has been published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta. She has also been awarded the Bard Fiction Prize and the Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Cline is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She is also a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Davis. Cline's writing is known for its exploration of female identity and the complexities of adolescence.