![Heather Havrilesky on May 30, 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Heather_Havrilesky_on_May_30%2C_2016.jpg)
Heather Havrilesky (born April 1970)is an American author, essayist, and humorist. She writes the advice column "Ask Polly" for ''
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
''. She is the author of ''Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir'', the advice book ''How to Be a Person in the World'' and the essay collection ''What If This Were Enough?''
Career
In 1996, Havrilesky was hired as a staff writer at
Suck.com, a
webzine
An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer maga ...
that was one of the web's earliest ad-supported content sites. Together with artist Terry Colon, she wrote the popular "Filler" comic strip for the site under the
pen name Polly Esther.
In 2001, Havrilesky started an advice column on her personal blog called Dear Rabbit. In May of that year, she began writing an advice column on Suck, but the site went under a month later.
Havrilesky began writing for ''
Salon'' in 2003 as their TV critic.
In 2011, Havrilesky became one of the original columnists for ''
The Daily'', the world's first
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
-only news app. Havrilesky exited that position soon after the app launched, and the site was shuttered by its parent
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
in December 2012.
She pitched an advice column called Ask Polly to ''
The Awl
''The Awl'' was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid."
History
Founded in April 2009 by David Cho and former ''Gawker'' editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk ...
'' in 2012, which ran as a weekly feature. ''New York'' magazine began publishing the column in 2014.
Each column addresses a single letter requesting advice.
[
Havrilesky's first book, ''Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir'' (2010), is an autobiographical work, it dealt mostly with her upbringing in Durham, North Carolina.
Her second book, ''How to Be a Person in the World'', was released in July 2016. The book was made up of new Ask Polly advice columns along with a handful of her most popular previously published columns.
Her third book, the essay collection ''What If This Were Enough?'' was released in 2018.] Erin Keane of Salon.com summarized the book as follows: "Havrilesky peels back the layers of late-capitalism malaise that bind us to the promise of some better version of ourselves lurking just beyond our reach, and dares us instead to accept our current, flawed lives, suffering and all, in order to settle into a less anxious and resentful present."[
]
Selected works
Books
* Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir (2010)
* How to Be a Person in the World (2016)
* How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern (2017)
* Ask Polly's Guide to Your Next Crisis (A Vintage Short) (2017)
* What If This Were Enough? (2018)
* ''Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage'' (2022)
Other writings
*
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Havrilesky, Heather
1970 births
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American women writers
American advice columnists
American humorists
American women non-fiction writers
Living people
The New Yorker people
American women columnists
Women humorists
Writers from Durham, North Carolina