By Ellen Madden
On the third of September in 1980 Jenny Han was born in Virginia. She is known for being an author, screenwriter, showrunner, and executive producer. She graduated from “The New School” in 2006 with a Master of Fine Arts creative writing degree. In the same year, Han wrote her first book for children, Shug, where the character Annemarie Wilcox experiences being a junior in a high school.
Between 2009 and 2011 Simon & Schuster published Hans’ first young adult genre trilogy that was titled The Summer I Turned Pretty, It’s Not Summer Without You, and We’ll Always Have Summer. This trilogy was known for being recognised as New York Times Best Sellers. Han based the trilogy on a girl called Belly Conklin who ends up in a love triangle with two brothers, her mother’s best friend’s sons. Since 2022, this trilogy has been turned into a series on Prime Video with the help of Jenny Han, as she was the executive producer and writer for three episodes.
In 2012, Han co-wrote her second trilogy, Burn for Burn, with Siobhan Vivan. Between 2013 and 2014, the other two novels were released, Fire with Fire and Ashes to Ashes. Based on three friends in high school who are planning vengeance in their town on an island. Han and Vivan wrote this trilogy to include paranormal and romance features.
Her latest trilogy, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, was written in 2014, where the character Laura Jean Covey, a high school student, has a catastrophic encounter when her love letters to her five previous crushes are mailed behind her back. Her sequel P.S. I Still Love You was awarded the “Young Adult 2015-2016 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature”. Her last book, Always and Forever, Laura Jean, was published in 2017. Jenny Han was the executive producer for the Netflix film trilogy between 2018 and 2021, which was the first of her publications to make it onto a streaming media platform.
In 2023, Jenny Han released her first TV series, “XO, Kitty,” as an executive producer and co-writer and starred as an airport gate agent. Han was later nominated for an Emmy later on in that year.
It is clear to see that by Han following her dreams to become a writer, she was able to advocate for the importance of having romance in your life while building a strong audience who cannot wait to see what other novels, films, and TV series she will produce in the near future.