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In a personal essay about growing up in Bogotá, Ingrid Rojas Contreras describes her mother’s work in divination as important to her own development as a writer.

“If you want to know what happens to a country that has opened itself entirely to Facebook, look to the Philippines.”

A wide-ranging piece of investigative journalism — the result of four years of research — on widespread abuse and in some cases, the killing of children at St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage in Vermont and other orphanages, in the 20th century.

In this searching personal essay, writer Scaachi Koul conflictedly interrogates her inability to ignore societal pressure and stop wishing she were thinner — along with her inability to get thinner in time for her upcoming wedding, for which her dress is too small.

“Stefani has always been a study in contrasts: a sexy tomboy; a rock star who loves her man and her manicures. So why are we still surprised every time she tells us who she is?”

Could kratom, a plant-based supplement signal the end of the opioid crisis?

In an personal essay, the writer Min Li Chan reflects on the multiculturalism of Micheal Jackson’s later work and his historic concert in Malaysia in 1996.

The poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib on the rituals of his faith that have, for him, fallen away, and those that have endured.

Bim Adewumni reports on three black women at Kensington Publishing who bring romance novels with black protagonists to the marketplace.

Anne Helen Petersen profiles former state representative Paulette Jordan in her bid to capture the Democratic nomination for governor of Idaho. A member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Jordan could be the first country’s Native American governor and Idaho’s first Democrat to hold the office since 1995.