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'We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well,' Roddy Doyle has written of his home town, 'because it is a dreary little dump most of the time.' For nearly a quarter of a century now, Doyle has dug beneath the varnish into the realities of Irish domestic life both in novels - including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, winner of the 1993 Booker Prize - and in short stories. Bullfighting (2011), was described as 'one of the finest collections of short stories since James Joyce's Dubliners'. Doyle discusses the craft of short-story writing with Paula Johnson, who runs the Royal Society of Literature's prizes, and reads from his work. The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize is awarded for the best unpublished short story of the year. After the announcement and presentation of the V.S. Pritchett Prize for 2013, the winning entry is read by its author.

We are grateful to the Irish Embassy for hosting this event, to ALCS for supporting it, to Christopher and Jennie Bland for sponsoring the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, and to Prospect for publishing the winning entry.

Photograph of Roddy Doyle taken by Mark Nixon