Katie Heaney

Katie Heaney brings comic precision to essays and novels about friendship, dating, and self-presentation. Dear Emma, her debut novel, centers on Harriet, a college student who anonymously answers relationship questions for a campus advice column. Its Grand Central Publishing record calls it a 2016 campus comedy in which Harriet discovers that her crush is dating her coworker, while an independent edition record confirms the Heaney byline and edition details. The advice-column structure lets Heaney contrast Harriet's confident public voice with her much less certain private choices. That tension also connects the novel to Heaney's memoir Never Have I Ever, although Dear Emma develops its questions through fiction rather than autobiography. Readers of Dear Emma will find a sharply observed story about jealousy, digital identity, friendship, and accountability, written with the conversational humor that established Katie Heaney's authorial voice.