The Polari Prize—first initiated to recognise and reward books by gay and lesbian authors—will not be going ahead this year. While last week the organisers wanted to defend their independence, and the longlisting they offered to The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas creator John Boyne, this week they have buckled to pressure from gender ideology activists.
What some in publishing whimsically call ‘The Battle of the Boyne’ had been brewing for a while, with the openly gay writer’s tale of ‘transitioning’ My Brother’s Name is Jessica (2019), accused of “misgendering” the book’s protagonist with the title. Boyne later backed Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling and apologised to Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, putting him on a collision course with an increasingly intransigent trans lobby.
A statement from the publicly funded Polari Prize organisers said they “condemn all forms of transphobia” and promised to
increase representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges on panels and undertake a governance and management review.
While the literary prize itself is now “paused,” which could well translate into ‘cancelled,’ Boyne himself had offered to withdraw, in effect, in an attempt at dispute resolution. The decision to abandon this year’s prize was also criticised by the LGB Alliance, whose chief executive Kate Baker told The Telegraph:
The TQ+ lobby corrupts everything it touches. This year there will be no winner of the Polari Prize, no celebration of fantastic LGB authors, no one’s career boosted … All because a few activists found the reality of same-sex attraction—and a gay man’s defence of it—too offensive.
The closure of the Polari Prize came about in a month that also witnessed
