Thursday 7 February 2008

Now you see it... now you don't...(Willesden again)

But it's bravery all round

I like this. Last post regarding The Battle of Willesden (2008)by Bilal Ghafoor

I like the transparency of Bilal’s post. I like the way they are so open about their judging methods. I like the fact that this isn’t big business, but a bunch of good hearted intelligent people trying to do something good.

I like the heartrending generosity of the response of one of the short listed writers, Kay Sexton.

KAY’S POST HERE

(And if you follow her blog, know her at all, you will know that she is going places, this writer. She’s both hard working and talented, and the two will produce great things.)

But one thing to add to her post... any comments on blogs can only be directed at the work in generic terms, NOT at the writers.

Would it still be a good idea to publish the anthology? Wearing my marketing hat, it could go either way. But as Stephen Moran said, without an outright winner, it would look wrong.

I’d ask Willesden to take note of one thing raised by Kay. Having been informed of her shortlisting status, she withdrew work from other competitions for which she’d paid an entry fee.

So she and maybe others are out of pocket…

1 comment:

Ossian said...

I've given the prize money in its entirety to Comic Relief. (I will publish a copy of the official receipt and the competition bank account can be audited by anybody so entitled.) My apologies to Kay and to all the others for their costs. I think they can watch the next ten Comic Relief telethons (or just the Ricky Gervais parts, more likely) guilt-free. Maybe Kay could write again to the competitions she pulled out of? All this has happened within a very few days, after all.

I've now gone from upsetting the contestants to upsetting my fellow judges, which is better, I think.