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This is modern love stories of love, loss and redemption.
I'm your host, Meghna Chakrabarti.
Im gonna guess that youve probably experienced heartbreak.
I know ive had my heart broken and maybe youre in the thick of it right now.
If so, take heart, because this weeks essay written by renowned novelist Lilly King offers a silver lining to heartbreak.
Zooey Lister Jones, writer, director and star of the new film Band Aid, reads Lily King's essay, an empty heart is one that can be filled I was.
31 before I got my heart broken.
It was spring.
I had quit my job and driven across country to an artist's colony in New England, the kind of place that provides you with a cabin in the woods that is not within sight of any of the other cabins.
My residency was for eight weeks.
I hoped to finish my first novel there.
The poet arrived a week after I did.
He was too skinny, but his eyes were very blue.
I think his first words to me were something about how his throat felt tight.
I was feeling the same thing, I told him.
Maybe, he said it was a reaction to all the MSG they put in the food.
A rumor was circulating that the MSG came in by the case to the back door of the kitchen.
This, I think, tells you all you need to know about how writers will, despite being given room and board and lunch, dropped off in a basket on the porch, manufacture anxiety my first joke with the poet was about Lolita.