JK Rowling reacts to Polari Prize 2025 cancellation following John Boyne row

Gender-critical author JK Rowling has blamed “tinpot tyrants” for the cancellation of the 2025 Polari Prize following a row over the inclusion of self-proclaimed ‘TERF’ author John Boyne.

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

Writing in a column for the Irish Independent, the author, best known for his book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, expressed support for Rowling and her views on trans issues, while comparing some “grown women” who disagree with her to characters in The Handmaid’s Tale who are “ready to pin a handmaiden down as her husband rapes her.”

Several nominated authors withdrew from the Polari Prize in opposition to Boyne’s nomination, including authors Jason Okundaye, Sanah Ahsan, Hanako Footman, and Olumide Popoola.

The organisation wrote in a subsequent statement that this year’s proceedings would be put on hold after the ceremony had been “overshadowed by hurt and anger”, which, it said, had been “painful and distressing for all concerned.”

Officials pledged to undertake a review of its policies to better support LGBTQ+ authors and to “increase representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges.”

Weighing in on the controversy, JK Rowling wrote that the cancellation had made her “both sad and angry” in an X/Twitter post, further accusing opponents to Boyne’s views of lying about him.

“An incredibly talented writer and a thoroughly decent human being (the two are by no means synonymous, as we know) traduced by tinpot tyrants without an ounce of his talent or integrity,” she wrote.

In his July column, dedicated to the Harry Potter author, Boyne commended Rowling for creating the Edinburgh-based sexual violence and rape crisis centre, Beira’s Place, which excludes trans women from its facilities.

In confronting criticism that JK Rowling’s rhetoric against trans people is “transphobic,” Boyne said that “tedious hyperbole” had been used to “demonise” the 60-year-old author.

Rowling’s views on trans people include opposition to trans women entering female bathrooms. In April, she misattributed statistics from the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, which reports that 98 per cent of sexual assault arrests in the UK involved men, to suggest trans women are a threat to cisgender women. However, the statistic does not mention trans people whatsoever.

In another April tweet, when challenged over her claims that excluding trans women would make female spaces safer, she compared trans women entering bathrooms to sexual predation, writing: “Creeps, voyeurs, paedophiles and rapists don’t campaign to make their predation more difficult. They tend to argue exactly what you’re arguing, ‘there’s no risk, stop pearl-clutching, don’t be a b**ch, let me in.'”

In his second statement on the controversy, John Boyne wrote in a column for The Telegraph criticising what he described as an “obsessive need to amplify the voices of trans people,” which he said was a “strange fixation,” believing 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, and the 2025 long list featured just one trans author.

Dr Avi Ben-Zeev, the only trans author to be longlisted this year, recently told PinkNews he was “heartbroken” over the cancellation, while expressing solidarity with those who withdrew from the competition and his “trans and non-binary siblings.”