Interview | Lily King: ‘I wanted to write about a big first love and a big first heartbreak’
Author Lily King discusses her latest novel, 'Heart the Lover,' which serves as both a prequel and sequel to her 2020 work 'Writers & Lovers.' The interview explores themes of first love, heartbreak, and the resilience required to navigate life's challenges.
Why it matters
Provides insight into the creative process of a prominent contemporary author and highlights a significant new release in literary fiction.
Reading about love, heartbreak, and simply carrying on with life through Lily King’s prose is a novel experience. Her latest novel, Heart the Lover (Canongate Books), shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize, is billed both as a prequel and sequel to her previous work, Writers & Lovers (2020) .
The article is a standard literary interview with no political or ideological agenda.
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