This week, we’re sharing stories from Elizabeth Wurtzel, Nick Martin, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, David Wolman, and Jason Turbow.

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1. ‘I Believe in Love’: Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Final Year, In Her Own Words

Elizabeth Wurtzel | GEN | January 8, 2020 | 19 minutes (4,830 words)

Memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel was working on this, her final personal essay, when she passed away on January 7th, 2020 from metastatic breast cancer. In the piece she reveals that as her health was declining, her marriage was unraveling, and that she was still wrestling with new information her mother finally revealed a couple of years ago: that her biological father was not the same man as the father she grew up with. With an introduction and end note from her editor and friend, Garance Franke-Ruta.

2. The Wrong House

Nick Martin | The Informant | January 6, 2020 | 12 minutes (3,100 words)

A case of mistaken identity in Michigan involving neo-Nazis, a terrified family with a newborn baby, and two people who share the name Daniel Harper.

3. On No Longer Being a Hysterical Woman

Nafissa Thompson-Spires | The Paris Review | January 6, 2020 | 11 minutes (2,865 words)

“Depression says that if I were more grateful, did more yoga poses, took more magnesium, pushed myself more, I’d be better. Depression is a white supremacist, a malignant narcissist, a rape apologist, a gaslighter, Iago, a sadist, a masochist, a hot Lego underfoot, a mind made hell. No amount of privilege, or gratitude, could undo these incurable, chronic diseases.”

4. The Man Who Chases Auroras to Push Away Darkness

David Wolman | Outside | January 6, 2020 | 16 minutes (4,121 words)

“After tragedy followed Hugo Sanchez from El Salvador to Canada, he started photographing the northern lights, finding a new sense of purpose in the wintertime sky.”

5. How New York’s Bagel Union Fought — and Beat — a Mafia Takeover

Jason Turbow | Grubstreet | January 8, 2020 | 12 minutes (3,164 words)

In the 1950s, organized crime in New York City wanted in on burgeoning bagel profits. The New York City Bagel Maker’s Union Local 338 — a membership made almost solely of Jewish bagel makers and their sons — wasn’t prepared to share the gelt.