This week, we’re sharing stories from Rukmini Callimachi, Annie Waldman and Joshua Kaplan, Jesmyn Ward, Hillery Stone, and Alice Driver.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

1. Breonna Taylor’s Life Was Changing. Then the Police Came to Her Door.

Rukmini Callimachi | The New York Times | September 3, 2020 | 26 minutes (6,500 words)

Two months before she was killed in her home in Louisville, Breonna Taylor tweeted triumphantly, “2020 deff gonna be my year WATCH!”

2. Sent Home to Die

Annie Waldman, Joshua Kaplan | ProPublica | September 2, 2020 | 28 minutes (7,029 words)

In New Orleans, hospitals sent infected COVID patients into hospice facilities or back home to die — to family members untrained and unprepared to care for them — and in some cases discontinuing treatment against the family’s wishes.

3. On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed By Pandemic

Jesmyn Ward | Vanity Fair | September 1, 2020 | 8 minutes (2,146 words)

“The acclaimed novelist lost her beloved husband—the father of her children—as COVID-19 swept across the country. She writes through their story, and her grief.”

4. Fever in the Woods

Hillery Stone | Guernica Magazine | August 26, 2020 | 14 minutes (3,691 words)

“Tucked far away with my children, this is where I feel safest and most afraid.”

5. Back to the Land

Alice Driver | Oxford American | August 25, 2020 | 8 minutes (1,914 words)

Alice Driver shares the story of her dad’s wish to build his own tomb on his own land. “He wanted his death, like his life, to be a work of art—a tomb he designed and filled with ceramics—and one that would allow him to define death on his own terms.”