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Six-Word Memoirs: The Valentine's Day Edition

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Can you sum up your love life in exactly six words? Hundreds of famous and not-so-famous authors rose to the challenge for Smith magazine's Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak.

The results are sometimes romantic: "He sees the me I don't" ... sometimes devastating: "For the children, I remain his." ... and often hilarious: "Found Jewish princess. Good-bye succulent pork."

Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak is Smith magazine's second collection of very, very brief life stories. In 2008, the magazine curated Not Quite What I Was Planning, a collection of six-word memoirs inspired by novelist Ernest Hemingway, who, when asked to write a full story in six words, responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, editors of the Smith memoir collections, talk with host Neal Conan about the process of distilling stories of falling in — and out of — love into just a few words.

Fershleiser's six-word memoir? "I finally threw away his toothbrush." And Smith's: "Our prison visitations were surprisingly romantic."

Smith and Fershleiser offer the following six-word suggestion for what to do with their collection of stories of happiness and heartbreak: Share them with someone you love.

Have your own story of love and heartbreak? Share it with us.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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