Emily M Danforth Books in Order

Emily M. Danforth was born and raised in Miles City, Montana, a small eastern Montana city known for its long-running Bucking Horse Sale. That landscape matters to her work. Wide-open country, close-knit communities, family expectations, and the pressure to fit in all show up in stories that pay close attention to young people finding room for themselves.

She went on to study at Hofstra University, then earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana. Later, she completed a Ph.D. in English and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Writing The Miseducation of Cameron Post began with a short story she wrote during her MFA. As the material grew, Cameron's voice and story followed Danforth into her doctoral work, where a draft of the novel became her creative dissertation. It was a long route to a first book, but it gave the story time to become the big, searching coming-of-age novel it is.

Published in 2012, The Miseducation of Cameron Post follows a gay teenager in 1990s Montana as she deals with grief, secrecy, friendship, first love, and conversion therapy. Readers often come to it for Cameron's clear-eyed voice and stay for the messy, funny, painful reality of her friendships and family life. The book won the Montana Book Award and was later adapted into a 2018 film directed by Desiree Akhavan.

Danforth's books make space for queer characters without treating their lives as simple lessons or symbols.

Her second novel, Plain Bad Heroines, arrived in 2020 and moved into a very different kind of territory. It is an adult gothic story that shifts between a girls' school in early twentieth-century Rhode Island and a present-day film production tied to the school's dark history. The novel combines haunted-house dread, Hollywood satire, romance, yellow jackets, and a narrator who likes to remind readers that stories can be both true and made up.

The two novels look very different on the surface, but they share some concerns. Danforth writes about people trying to name what they want when the world around them insists on narrowing their choices. She is interested in the rules people inherit, the risks of being seen, and the friendships and romances that can make survival feel possible.

She also has a taste for odd details and dark humor.

Alongside writing fiction, Danforth has taught literature and creative writing. She has lived in Rhode Island with her wife, Erica, her mother, Sylvia, and their dogs, Kevin and Sally O'Malley. Whether she is writing about rural Montana or a supposedly cursed New England school, she brings patience to the people at the center of the trouble, even when the trouble gets strange.