Boyne was to receive the James Joyce Award and an honorary fellowship of the Society. However, in a social media post on Friday, he said the offer had been retracted.<\/p>\n
It comes after the Polari Prize, an annual prize celebrating LGBTQ+ literature, was \u201cpaused\u201d for this year following a boycott over the inclusion of Boyne on the longlist.<\/p>\n
The boycott stemmed from Boyne\u2019s views on transgender issues and his public support of British author JK Rowling.<\/p>\n
More than 800 writers and workers in the publishing industry signed a statement calling for a boycott of the Polari Prize.<\/p>\n
His inclusion on the longlist was described in the statement as \u201cinappropriate and hurtful to to the wider community of LGBTQ+ readers and writers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Writing in the Sunday Independent in July, Boyne expressed support for Rowling and described himself as a \u201cfellow Terf\u201d \u2013 an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a person who claims to be a feminist but denies that transgender women are women and oppose trans-inclusive legislation.<\/p>\n
In the post on Friday, Boyne said the Polari Prize controversy \u201cblew up\u201d the day after he received the letter notifying him of the award.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn early August, I received this letter from UCD, awarding me the James Joyce Award, \u2018the highest honour any student body in Ireland can bestow. Their reasons for giving me this prize were deeply moving and I felt honoured,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy an unhappy coincidence, the Polari Prize nonsense blew up the following day and, from my very first reply, my messages over the next six weeks were completely ignored, as were messages from my agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis morning, under threat of legal action, they finally deigned to respond, simply informing me that they were withdrawing the award.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyne said the decision to deny him the award was \u201cbaffling\u201d given the Literary and Historical Society has said his \u201cinsistence on empathy, justice, and authenticity is more vital than ever\u201d, among other qualities.<\/p>\n
In the letter notifying Boyne of the award, the Literary and Historical Society noted past recipients of the James Joyce Award included all former Irish presidents and taoisigh, Stephen Fry, Roddy Doyle and Seamus Heaney. Rowling herself received the award in 2008.<\/p>\n
After the longlist for the 2025 Polari Prize Book of the Year included Boyne\u2019s novel Earth, 16 out of 24 nominees for the award withdrew, along with two judges.<\/p>\n
Despite outlining his disappointment and bafflement, Boyne said he \u201cwon\u2019t be losing sleep\u201d over the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cAwards are ultimately meaningless. The books matter. Readers matter. And if using one\u2019s platform to defend the rights of women, children, lesbians and gay men means that some plaque doesn\u2019t end up on my wall… well, I won\u2019t be losing any sleep over it.”<\/p>\n
The UCD Literary and Historical Society has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boyne was to receive the James Joyce Award and an honorary fellowship of the Society. However, in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[8335,18,117,19,17,15913],"class_list":{"0":"post-60693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-darragh-nolan","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-ucd"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}