The organisers of the Polari Prize have announced they’re putting a pause on this year’s award, and will return in 2026.
The award had been steeped in controversy after author John Boyne was included on their long list for the 2025 prize. Boyne has attracted controversy over his statements against transgender women and public support for controversial author J.K Rowling.
In their latest statement, the third the organisation has put out since the scandal broke, organiser said they would be taking time to review their operations, increase transgender representation on its judging panel and learning from this year’s experience.
The Polari Prize, now in its fifteenth year, announced their long list of nominees for their 2025 awards earlier this month. Ahead of the awards the list of nominees is shortened, a common practice in literature prizes.
Each year the British prize awards works of literature with LGBTIQA+ themes, it’s two main awards are the Polari Prize and the Polari First Book Prize for a debut publication which focusses on new authors.
Not long after this year’s list of 12 novels in contention for each award was announced a slew of author’s asked for their books to be removed from consideration, alarmed that the judges had included Boyne’s latest novella Earth. Two of the awards judges also announced their resignation.
Boyne, a gay author best known for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has previously written articles about his views against transgender inclusion, and voice his support for fellow author J.K. Rowling – describing himself as a fellow TERF. The acronym stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Boyne has also been criticised over his previous novel My Brother’s Name is Jessica in which character’s ‘dead name’ and misgender the title character.
As the days passed, more authors asked for their works to be removed from consideration from the awards. Soon the First Book prize only had three of its original twelve works still in the race. While the main prize had dropped to nine out of the twelve nominated works.
Boyne responded to the controversy with a statement arguing that he was a victim of a campaign of bullying and intimidation, and criticised the authors who had withdrawn their work. He highlighted that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a teenager and his works reflected on that trauma.
Boyne also laid down a challenge for the authors who’d protested against his inclusion, saying he’d ask the organisers of the award to remove his book from consideration, on the proviso that every single author who had pulled their work from the award returned to the competition.
Today the organisers pulled the plug on the 2025 awards, with a statement announcing they’d return in 2026.
“What was supposed to be a celebration of exceptional LGBTQ+ literature has been overshadowed by hurt and anger, which has been painful and distressing for all concerned and we apologize to everyone who has been affected.” they said.
“Many discussions have been undertaken over the last two weeks – with authors, judges, stakeholders, and funders – about the impacts and ramifications of listing John Boyne’s novel and how we can learn from this experience and move forward.
“We have decided as a result to pause the prize this year while we increase representation of trans and gender non-conforming judges on the panels for the awards and undertake a governance and management review to include our aims and values and work to better support everyone within our LGBTQ+ Polari community. We already have secured strong representation for next year, which we build on.
The organisation, who previously told followers to embrace different points of view, now said they’d be looking to see who they would help create more supportive spaces.
“We will also explore discussions about the tensions between the claims of freedom of expressions and the need to create inclusive and supportive space in a world hostile to our trans community members and our community at large.
“We extend our heartfelt apologies to everyone affected this year, for the disappointment and dispair this has caused.
“We acknowledge the ongoing support of the Polari community, everyone we have consulted, and our hugely supportive partners. We are a tiny operation that has run on goodwill and small pots of funding and sponsorship for 15 years and will endeavor to find a way forward in good faith.” the statement read.
