Kristan Higgins Shares Her Humor, Heart, and Literary Insights

New Yorks Times Bestselling author Kristan Higgins brings warmth, wit, and wisdom to her novels, capturing life’s complexities with heart and humor.

Exploring Books, Writing, And The Power Of Human Emotion

Kristan Higgins reveals her love for dark thrillers, shares childhood reading memories, discusses emotional depth in literature, and offers candid insights into her career and the stories that inspire her.

Kristan Higgins, the celebrated author behind a collection of bestselling novels, has long been a master at weaving stories that strike the perfect balance between heartfelt emotion and laugh-out-loud humor. With over twenty novels to her name and accolades spanning from the New York Times to People Magazine, Kristan has reached millions of readers worldwide, her works translated into dozens of languages. Known for creating vividly human characters and relatable stories, her gift lies in capturing life’s messy, joyous, and bittersweet moments with the charm and wit only she can deliver.

In this featured interview from Reader’s House magazine, Kristan Higgins pulls back the curtain on her creative process, her inspirations, and the books that shape her life. From crafting stories that move readers to the core to sharing how her own voracious reading as a child shaped her storytelling, Kristan’s reflections offer an intimate glimpse into the mind of an author whose voice continues to resonate with audiences around the globe. Fans of her writing and those new to her work alike will discover fresh insights into the woman behind the words.

What do you read when you’re working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?

I tend to read dark, domestic thrillers…the type where the wife is plotting to murder her husband, and then he turns up dead, but she’s not actually the killer. Does this say anything about my own marital state of mind when writing? Let’s not look too hard at that.

I generally avoid reading my own genre while writing a book because I tend to have “plot envy” and curse myself for not coming up with the idea the other author has so beautifully created. Once I’m done with my first draft, however, I throw myself into a pile of all those books I’ve been avoiding and read till my eyes cross.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

I want the full human emotional experience. If at all possible, I like to curl up into fetal position at least once during a book, laugh till I cry and scream out in frustration. That’s not too much to ask, is it? But that’s why we read—to experience another life with its full range, and hopefully, to be inspired by that character as they struggle and triumph.

What kind of reader were you as a child? 

Voracious. When things were difficult at home, I would climb a tree with a book. When things were happy, I’d curl up in our seldom-used living room and read (and hide from my chores). I’d read in the car, even though it made me carsick, and I’d read while sitting on my horse. At one school, I read every book in the library before the end of the year. I was an awkward, shy kid, and reading was a portal to another way of being. It’s fair to say that without books, I wouldn’t be the person I am.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Sometimes I’m quite proud not to have read a Great Work of Literature, simply because the author has offended me (Ernest Hemingway, for example, and his propensity to write about men raping women without consequence). I never read On the Road by Jack Kerouac because I thought the premise was self-indulgent and boring. I think Moby-Dick could’ve lost a couple hundred pages, but that being said, if I ever have to slaughter a whale, I’ll know exactly how to do it.

The book I’m most embarrassed not to have read in its entirety is the Qur’an. The only things I know about Islam is second-hand. I’ve read parts of it, but not the whole thing, and given how influential a religion it is, I feel like I should know more.

What do you plan to read next?

The Starfish Sisters by the great Barbara O’Neal. She has never written a book I haven’t loved.