A recording of Jackie Kay and Paula Johnson discussing Kay's work, in a celebration of the short story for the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, from Monday 5 November 2012. The recording also features a reading of 2012's winning short story by its author Martina Devlin.

As well as being a prolific poet and the author of a prize-winning novel, Trumpet, Jackie Kay has written three volumes of short stories. The latest, Reality, Reality, studies the bizarre strategies adopted by ‘the recently bereaved, the dumped, the chucked’ to cope with loneliness, and was published to great acclaim earlier this year. What attracts her to the short story is its focus and ‘intensity’: ‘It’s like having a malt whisky really, a short story. You can have a wee malt but if you tried to drink a whole pint of whisky you’d be dead.’ Kay reads from her stories and discusses them with Paula Johnson, who runs the RSL’s prizes. The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize is awarded for the best unpublished short story of the year. After the announcement and presentation of the prize for 2012, the winning entry is read by its author.

We are grateful to Christopher and Jennie Bland for sponsoring this prize, to Prospect magazine for publishing the winning entry, and to ALCS for making this event possible.

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Related RSL Fellows

Jackie Kay 2002