John Boyne responds to Polari Prize cancellation

Author John Boyne has spoken out after Polari Prize organisers halted this year’s literary competition following backlash over his inclusion.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas author described LGBTQ+ literary awards’ plan to pause proceedings this year as an “interesting example of self-cancellation”.

The annual awards were put on hold this year after Boyne’s novel, Earth, was included in the long list of nominees less than a month after he described himself as a “TERF”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Writing in a column for the Irish Independent, Boyne expressed support for fellow author, JK Rowling, and her views on trans issues while claiming that “grown women” who publicly disagree with her are akin to characters in The Handmaid’s Tale who are “ready to pin a handmaiden down as her husband rapes her.”

Following Boyne’s nomination, several nominated authors withdrew from the Polari Prize, including Queer As Folklore author Sacha Coward, who said he could not “continue in good faith” to participate in the event.

In his second public statement on the controversy, Boyne wrote in a column for The Telegraph that while the competition wasn’t of “major importance” to him, he refused to withdraw, claiming it would endorse “mob mentality.”

The author stipulated that doing so would have given way to “Trumpian” tactics by colleagues who he claimed would scour nominees’ social media posts for “wrongthink.”

“Novelists would have been given free rein to spy on each other and report their neighbours,” he continued. “Soon, other prizes would have followed suit, and it wouldn’t have been long until those lucky enough to be given a publishing deal would have gone through similar scrutiny from the moment those deals were announced.

“I couldn’t be party to that; it would have been the death of ideas, a loss brought about by the raging tantrums of people who, I suspect, have not read anything with more than 280 characters for many years.”

In its statement announcing the cancellation, Polari Prize acknowledged that the awards ceremony had been “overshadowed by hurt and anger”, which it said had been “painful and distressing for all concerned.”

The organisation pledged to undertake a review of its policies to better support LGBTQ+ authors from across the community and to “increase representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges.”

Responding, Boyne criticised what he described as an “obsessive need to amplify the voices of trans people,” which he said was a “strange fixation” and that one would “get less amplification at a Metallica concert.”

Just one trans author has ever won the Polari Prize in its decades-long history. The 2025 long list featured just one trans author.

Boyne claimed he hadn’t been contacted by Polari Prize organisers in the wake of the controversy, arguing that “perhaps a happier resolution may have been found” if they had.

He argued the Polari Prize’s response to the row “suggests that gay and lesbians who do not conform to specific gender ideology will be rooted out and excluded from future consideration.”

He suggested that its decision “might damage younger LGB writers” and their right to hold gender-critical beliefs.

Boyne added he held no “antipathy” towards authors who had withdrawn from the contest in protest at his inclusion and that he had engaged in a “respectful” exchange with one on Friday (15 August), which he believed had ended “amicably.”

“I do think they should reflect on how they would like to be treated should their names ever be maligned, their characters misrepresented, or their words twisted out of all context.”

Earlier this week, trans author Dr Avi Ben-Zeev, the only trans author to be longlisted this year, told PinkNews he was “heartbroken” over the event’s cancellation, arguing it felt like “another form of erasure.”

While he objected to Boyne’s rhetoric, Dr Ben-Zeev, author of Calling My Deadname Home, refused to withdraw from the event, saying there is “nothing more trans-exclusionary … than to see people like me disappear.”

He expressed solidarity with those who rescinded their books from the event, as well as his “trans and non-binary siblings,” adding: “My existence is not up for debate. I’ll only get louder and more joyous.”