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For Richard Ford, who judged this year’s Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award, the ‘Irishness’ or otherwise of the stories was not a consideration – only their quality. Here he gives his overall impressions before assessing the six shortlisted stories, the winner of which will be announced later this month

I’VE ALWAYS resisted notions of national literature, and the suggestion that there’s a distinctive Irish short story and voice, or a distinctive American one, or a Bulgarian one or a Somali one. Yes, okay, there maybe detectable differences. But literature’s great opportunity is, in part, to make all these tongues speak a universal language that subordinates frail nation-state concerns in favour of more basic human ones which require champions.