Writers often talk about cutting their teeth on short fiction to prepare themselves for writing a novel, but others will tell you short stories are much harder to get right.

Two contemporary short fiction writers, Dunedin’s Breton Dukes (‘brilliantly intense’) and expat Cantabrian Nic Low (‘machete-sharp’), write stories that waver between dark and light, edging towards satire and not shying away from difficult themes. They discuss the sprint versus the marathon, and the ideas that spur them to put pen to paper, with chair Julie Hill, author of the recent collection, Shamejoy.