The Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ Literature Faces Pushback Over Nomination of Self-Described TERF

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The Polari Prize is an annual literary prize in the UK dedicated to LGBTQ+ literature. Founded in 2011, it has celebrated writers like Kirsty Logan, Julia Armfield, and Joelle Taylor. Among its longlisted nominees for the prize in fiction is Earth by John Boyne. You may know him best as the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , a piece of Holocaust porn so offensive that the Auschwitz Museum called him out for it. He’s also become known in Britain and Ireland for his proud transphobia.

In a July 2025 column for the Irish Independent , he called himself a ‘fellow TERF’ in a piece where he proclaimed himself to be ‘in a

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