The most prestigious prize in queer literature, the Polari, has come under fire for including an openly transphobic author in its longlist. As a result, many longlisted authors – as well as two judges – have pulled out. The event reveals how recent anti-trans sentiment in the UK has extended to the very spaces designed to resist it.
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
On Friday August 1, 2025, the Polari Prize committee announced its yearly longlist, celebrating the best in the queer literary achievement. By the end of the following week, the majority of nominated authors had removed themselves from consideration and an open letter with 800 signees had been circulated, calling for the exclusion of one writer, John Boyne. A gay Irish author most renowned for his 2006 Holocaust bestseller The Boy in Striped Pyjamas and now nominated for his gritty crime novel Earth – an exploration of tabloid sensationalism and sports-endemic homophobia – Boynehas self-identified under the title TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). He is also a longtime long-supporter of the British author J.K. Rowling, who has personally funded the recent retrograde on trans rights in the UK – for instance her five-figure donation to the Supreme Court case that ruled a woman is legally defined as a biological female
Since Boyne’s inclusion in the longlist was announced, other longlisted authors have withdrawn their works from consideration en masse. As of writing, eight of the twelve nominees for the First Book Prize have withdrawn; an open letter, signed by the likes of Alice Oseman and Julia Armfield, has called for Boyne’s removal from the longlist altogether. One judge – trans author Nicola Dinan, whose own novel Bellies won the First Book Polari last year – resigned in solidarity. Another, Bob Hughes, soon followed.
In response to both author condemnation and social media firestorm, the Polari press team issued a self-contradictory statement. They “completely understand and respect” Dinan’s decision, yet refuse to condemn the views of someone who doesn’t respect her right to exist. They boil down Boyne’s transphobic views to an example of “radically different positions on substantive issues”, as though the position in question doesn’t target the very community members the Polari seeks to champion. Though long-term measures like a “full review” of the prize process, and plans to liaise with “representatives from across the community ahead of next year’s awards,” are promising, they detract from a more immediate concern: why Boyne’s inclusion was allowed to happen in the first place.
The undermining inclusion of a transphobic author in the running for an award meant to uplift queer voices (which, lest we forget, includes those of trans people) is sadly congruous with rising anti-trans sentiment in the UK, the country where the Polari Prize is based. Particularly following the recent Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of a woman – ‘biologically female’ – excludes trans women (but strangely includes trans men), the UK has become a hotbed for transphobic rhetoric. Supermarket chain M&S, for one, recently faced controversy when a female employee offered to help a fourteen-year-old girl in the lingerie section. (The employee was not confirmed to be trans, only tall, and did not offer to fit a bra nor follow the girl into a fitting room.)
The ensuing hatred and attempted boycott of M&S is emblematic of an imagined threat that trans people pose to cis people. There is no evidence to suggest that trans people are more likely to sexually assault a woman; in fact, cisgender men are statistically more likely to abuse women and girls. Some defenders shroud transphobia with words like ‘gender-critical’ or the dreaded ‘anti-woke’, in the interest of protecting women’s rights. But the sheer existence of trans people (which, contrary to the beliefs of some, will not be erased by legislation nor bigotry) does not encroach on one’s own gender identity.
The ideas that public figures like Boyne and Rowling espouse on social media, then, are not only hallucinated, but they have real-world weight. Rowling’s transphobia has manifested into court case donations and public hate trains against trans figures like India Willoughby; Boyne, meanwhile, previously courted controversy for his depiction of a trans character, in his 2019 novel My Brother’s Name is Jessica (which, for a start, deadnames said character in its title). Casual transphobia in works such as these normalise such attitudes in their readers – your unassuming father who picks it up at the airport, or your friend who buys it because it’s won a prestigious award. Say, a Polari.
This speaks to the influence of prizes and awards on consumer decisions; as such, you would think that Polari organisers would more carefully consider the books they choose as well as the impact of those decisions, having been active for well over a decade. But by chalking actual transphobia up to a difference of opinion, the organisers ignore the wider, more grim implications of Boyne’s views. In giving him a platform, they essentially endorse his comments, allowing anti-trans sentiment to seep into the queer spaces designed to resist it.
Anti-trans media outlets have been quick to decry authorial boycotts as performative (read: ‘woke’) hysteria, yet these withdrawals by writers – few of whom are likely even able to make a living from their writing – indicates something much bigger. These are acts of self-sacrificial solidarity that defy the complicity that – in our age of capitalist self-interest – many of us have been conditioned into. It’s the point made by journalist Omar El Akkad in his recent and acclaimed critique of the sweeping institutional silence around Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including within the literary community: that One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
It’s important to note – and perhaps easy to forget – that trans people helped pave the way for queer people to exist freely in society. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, for instance, led the charge at the Stonewall riots, yet their names are too often forgotten. It makes transphobic sentiments among gay people – like that of the trans-exclusionary LGB Alliance – all the more bizarre, at least if you operate with the same ‘if they come for one of us, they come for all of us’ mindset as I do.
The decision of trans writer Avi Ben-Zeev to not withdraw from the longlist, however, complicates the matter. While supporting fellow writers who did withdraw from the Polari this year, Ben-Zeev felt if he walked away, he would be “erasing my trans story,” as he told PinkNews. He’s now the only trans writer remaining on the Polari longlist. Ben-Zeev is right; trans authors should not be shamed out of their own award. But it’s difficult, too, to not feel sorry for Ben-Zeev, that he’s keeping himself in the running for a corrupted award. The world we live in already expects trans people, and minorities by and large,to accept the bare minimum and take everything as a gift. It’s disappointing that the Polari is not an exception to that rule.
Trans inclusion is inherently tied to queer liberation – that includes cis, white, gay men like Boyne. To be transphobic, particularly as a gay person, is to abuse your own privilege. It is to ignore why you’re able to kiss the people you want to kiss without legal repercussion. It is to discriminate against someone whose position you were once in, and – if recent rumblings in the US regarding same-sex marriage come to fruition – whose position you could easily be in again.
One author, Amy Twigg, justified her decision to withdraw her book Spoilt Creatures from the First Book award by referring to Boyne’s own description of himself as a ‘TERF’: “the first two words in that acronym,” she wrote on Instagram, “are in direct opposition to Polari Prize’s claims of inclusivity.” This is the heart of the issue: if a prize created to uplift marginalised people now marginalises them again – from within the supposed safety of their own community – then who is the prize really for?
Update August 18, 2025: The Polari Prize has announced it will “pause” its 2025 awards competition following controversy over its inclusion of author and self-proclaimed ‘TERF’ John Boyne in its long list.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
– – –
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at [email protected]
– – –
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know.
– – –
Listen to our podcast ‘Queer News & Journalism’ on your favourite podcast platform.
We appreciate it. Thanks for reading.
