Dear Norah Jones Ticketholders,

Thank you for your patience.

Although Norah Jones through her representatives promised to refund the deposit paid to Creative Artist Agency (Norah Jones’s agent), she has instead decided to keep $50,000. Although I explained to the representatives of Norah Jones that this would make it impossible for the Hawaii Writers Foundation to repay our Norah Jones ticket holders, they refused to release the money.

Unfortunately, the Hawaii Writers Foundation is a small nonprofit that simply cannot easily absorb this kind of financial loss. So at this time, HWF will not be able to give full refunds to ticketholders.

However, we do feel responsible, and plan to return a full refund to each person who bought tickets. But it will take some time. We will continue to negotiate with Norah Jones for a full refund of our deposit, and hopefully she will respond favorably. But we also receive donations and fees for events and our online content. After talking with our advisors, we feel confident we can offer full refunds by this coming January.

This week we will send a small check as a token of good faith. We have an impeccable record of paying our bills for the last 17 years, and we have every intention of paying back each and every person who bought tickets.

Please note that if you have or are planning to order a chargeback on your credit card, please return this check. Not returning the check will cause an automatic “protest” on your chargeback request and will delay your refund.

Let me apologize once again for this situation. The Foundation has lost more than $150,000 on the concert so far, and therefore, is going to struggle to go on with our work of helping people get published and encouraging literacy amongst the young in Hawaii. But we have every faith that we will go on, and that we will pay back each ticketholder.

Thank you for your understanding.

Mahalo,

John Tullius

President

Hawaii Writers Foundation