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'Ask Polly' Teaches Readers 'How To Be A Person In The World'

Heather Havrilesky is the writer behind the New York magazine column, 'Ask Polly'
Willy Somma
Heather Havrilesky is the writer behind the New York magazine column, 'Ask Polly'

Writer Heather Havrilesky talks about being an existential advice columnist for New York magazine

Durham native HeatherHavrileskyhas spent most of her professional life as a social commentator of sorts. 

Credit Penguin Random House
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Penguin Random House

She has written online cartoons about the absurdity of life, reviews of crappy TV reality shows, and columns about why we love crappy TV reality shows.

It is perhaps no wonder that she has become a successful advice columnist.

Havrilesky is the writer behind "Ask Polly," a weekly column in New York magazine in which she guides readers through existential questions.

She dishes out honest advice with wit, sarcasm, and love so tough that Miss Manners would surely find it objectionable.

Her new collection of columns is called "How to be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life" (Doubleday/2016).

Host Frank Stasio talks with Havrilesky about her life as a modern advice columnist.

Copyright 2016 North Carolina Public Radio

Will Michaels started his professional radio career at WUNC.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.