Homelessness

Paul Polak, founder of the nonprofit International Development Enterprises, has spent 25 years working to eradicate poverty. In Out of Poverty, he says simple technologies and a willingness to listen are key — and that government subsidies can do more harm than good.

The former poet laureate reflects on his brother's passing in the new poem "August Notebook: A Death." The elegy is included in Hass' new collection, The Apple Trees at Olema, which includes material from his first five works — as well as new poems on the art of storytelling and personal relations in a violent world.

Writer Nick Flynn was working in a homeless shelter in his 20s when his father — an alcoholic and self-proclaimed writer who left when Flynn was a baby — showed up as a client. His story is now a movie called Being Flynn, starring Paul Dano and Robert De Niro.

At the height of her addiction to heroin, Tracey Helton Mitchell lived in an alley and sold her body. Now she works as an addiction specialist helping others. Her new memoir is The Big Fix.

Arnold's latest film, which won the Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of a group of abandoned teenagers who travel together selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door.

Andrea Arnold's new movie about a teenage girl who takes up with an unusual group of salespeople won a the Jury Prize at Cannes this year. Critic David Edelstein calls it a "wonderful" film.

White spent his early childhood in poverty in Baltimore, at times sleeping in abandoned houses. He's now principal tubist in the Santa Fe Symphony and the New Mexico Philharmonic.