Vivian Stephens helped turn romance writing into a billion-dollar industry. Then she got pushed out.

A dispatch from the World Clown Association Convention.

From 1968-1973, the three teenage Wiggin sisters, guided by a domineering father, played their strange music at New Hampshire ballrooms and recorded a single album. The Philosophy of the World LP goes for over $500 today, but the intervening decades have not been kind to the Wiggins.

In their depictions of domination, the artist’s works, full of world-building and philosophy, do more than flip the script.

A look at Chicago’s DJ culture in the ’90s.

One day in 1997, Sneak promised his friend and fellow Chicago DJ Derrick Carter a new 12-inch for Carter's label Classic, then spent hours fruitlessly laboring over a basic, bustling four-four beat. Finally, Sneak gave in and smoked the J he'd had stashed for later in the day. When he came back inside, he carelessly dropped the needle onto a Teddy Pendergrass LP, heard the word "Well . . . ," and realized, "That's the sample, right there." He threaded Pendergrass's 20-year-old disco hit "You Can't Hide From Yourself" through a low-pass filter to give it the effect of going in and out of aural focus, creating one of the definitive Chicago house singles.

A profile of the author at 84.

What the journey of swifts, who spend all their time in the sky, tell us about the future.

Frankie Manning was the greatest swing dancer alive. Then the world forgot about him.

An interview with Jia Tolentino.

On the pioneering New Yorker cartoonist.

A conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now?

The Asian-American literary pioneer, whose writing has paved the way for many immigrants’ stories, has one last big idea.

Anytime the racial temperature goes up and hell pays a visit to earth, the disappointment takes a holiday. And you fight. You fight because you’re tired. Yet you’re tired because you’ve been fighting. For so long. In waves, in loops, in vacuums, in vain.

The two poets correspond about basketball, life, and living.

A profile of Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller, whose show makes more than $500,000 in profit every week.

A profile of Little Richard in the last years of his life, confined to a wheelchair and living in the penthouse suite at the Hilton in downtown Nashville.

Meet the artist who hid away for a month in total darkness.

A profile of Marlon Brando, 33, holed up in a hotel suite in Kyoto where he was filming Sayonara.

On the then-new phenomenon of dead downtowns.

The photographer who showed us the world always kept coming back to a little town by the sea.

The strange life of a 16-year-old model.

A young dealer goes on the lam after selling multiple masterpieces to several buyers simultaneously.

The making of Caddyshack.

Sharon Stern devoted herself to Butoh, a Buddhist-influenced Japanese dance. Did her mentor lead her down a dangerous path?