Sarah Menkedick, the up-and-coming star editor of Vela, selects 40 Town's "Tiny Birthday," by Laina Richards, for Vela's weekly round-up of "Women We Read." Writes Menkedick, "This piece is full of careful, heartbreaking little details – the Tootsie Pop wedged between the bananas, the grief-muted exchanges between waiting parents, a hand the size of a nickel. It is one you read with your heart clenched in both empathy and fear; the prose is soft, respectful, elegant, and honest, and doesn’t need to resort to sentimentality to make us care, deeply."