One novelist as well known for her short fiction as for her Booker-shortlisted novels is Sarah Hall, whose “dark and feral” Mrs Fox won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2013. What is it about short form that she loves? “I think short stories have made me a better writer… The things that have to be done in a short-story structure make me step up my game a bit.” Another is Stella Duffy, the author of more than 50 short stories, as well as more than 10 novels, who is a fan of the form both as writer and reader. “[It] offers a clarity of moment,” she says. “A continuation of one (or a few) feelings, emotions, ideas, that can only be sustained for a certain time before, in a novel, some plot needs to come along and help us turn the page. In a story it is possible to hold a moment, keep it heightened, without risking the reader giving up on us.”