At the heart of many of Justine Sless’s short stories is connection, but little real contact between people.  In ‘Measured, Silk and other stories’ there is keen observation by characters but it is the loneliness that people feel and their inability to voice it that gives these stories a potency. Dias Novita Wuri’s, “Birth Canal” addresses the inherited intergenerational legacy of suffering and guilt most often borne by women that has been brought about by colonialism, conquest and even ignorance.