The Last Word on Willesden

For completeness, here's the final word from the Willesden Short Story Competition judges.

It explains the judging process, the mix-up with the short-listed authors, and reiterates the rationale behind the judgement. Perhaps more of this detail and less of the "call to greatness" first up would have prevented upsetting some people...

The short-listed candidates were contacted and asked whether they wanted their names to appear. Some comments made on the comments page of the blog about these writers were so unflattering that it was decided that the WH should be sensitive to their feelings... When the decision was made to split the prize money, the short-listed writers were contacted again and most of them said that they did not want their names or stories to appear and did not want any prize money. They told us to f--- off. Which is fair enough.

All a bit of a storm in a tea cup really. Or in the modern parlance: "something to blog about."

I certainly wouldn't have turned down the money and the publicity, no matter how adverse. No one can be summed up by one story. Thankfully - otherwise what would my non-shortlisted entry say about me?