“I needed my sobriety to stand on its own, rather than ebbing and flowing with the tides of my fickle faith.” An unflinching essay on religion, self-image, and the writer’s complicated path out of addiction.

What is a “Song of Summer?” At Consequence of Sound, Collin Brennan tries to define a hard-to-pin-down musical phenomenon, while looking at some notable examples from years past.

“You are gone, and, although others share nearly your exact same story, by some twist of fate they are alive, and you are not.” A year later, a mother writes about her newborn son’s death.

At Literary Hub, Garnette Cadogan writes about his move from Jamaica to the US — and how he had to relearn the subtle, dangerous art of navigating city streets as a black man.

“In evolving with us for tens of thousands of years, maybe dogs became not just exemplars of happiness but, like humans, emotionally fragile creatures.” At Longreads, author Richard Gilbert paints a lighthearted portrait of Belle Krendl, his weird rescue dog.

“I had the feeling I had known this man all of my life.” Author and Holocaust survivor Ellen Norman Stern on her first meeting with Elie Wiesel, about whom she wrote a young-adult biography.

Dana Schwartz, an Observer journalist, writes to the newspaper publisher after Donald Trump — his father-in-law — shares a controversial (arguably anti-Semitic) tweet.