“Ruby” is a teenager in the foster care system who wants to escape the problems of her environment and live her own life. She’ll have to give up to win.

The limitless faith of childhood is exchanged for perpetual fear in adulthood, and, ironically, results in the creation of an imaginary monster.

Spring is coming and my dad is dying. The daffodils are blooming along the sides of the road and the trees are filled with white blossom. He sleeps most of the time now. The wind smells like dew on freshly sprung green grass. His hearing has started to fail. Next weekend [...]

Out of my window I can see the eucalyptus trees swaying in the wind. The leaves are rustling and the sunlight is falling in dappled rays. A smaller tree in front, with tortoise shell bark, has bright green leaves that turn a luminous yellow with the backlight. Everything is moving, fanning [...]

It’s amazing what a walk in the woods can do. It can transform apathy to passion, fear to awe and ugliness to beauty. Mum’s Van is an idea for an organization to promote adventures with teenagers in your area.

Slake is everything the LA Weekly was at its best, without the pages of ads or the listings we never read anyway.

It began with an article posted on the Fox News website — With Revolutionaries ‘Looking On,’ Teachers Take Kids on a Protest Trip to Arizona — and soon spiraled into a slugging match between the far, far left and the far, far right. Anything involving the SB 1070 law has a tendency to [...]

At Trinity Elementary School in Southeast Los Angeles, a group of fifth-grade girls donning wide-brimmed hats sat down for a spot of afternoon tea.

For many, it was their first tea party, but each one knew to place their napkins on their laps and keep their elbows off the table. They even knew how to stimulate [...]

Affectionately known to the locals as “Marijuana Man,” he spends his days sitting on the grass verge along the Boardwalk. His friends - too - are cardholders; each one of them seeks relief in that centuries-old “wonder drug.” Today, he has a few myths to debunk - from the equivalency of pharmaceutical drugs, to societal [...]

It’s almost 6am, and the earliest I have ever boarded a bus in Los Angeles. The world outside is dark. Inside, we’re all sleepy. The school girl is sleepy. The man with the headphones is sleepy. The people at the back of the bus, although I’m too tired to turn my head and [...]