Now four authors gang up on JK
‘Requests weren’t met positively’
FOUR writers yesterday quit author JK Rowling’s literary agency in the latest protest over her views on transgender issues.
The group resigned from The Blair Partnership, which has long represented the Harry Potter writer.
It came after Rowling expressed ‘deep concerns’ about transgender activism in an essay earlier this month, in which she described being a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Harry Potter film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have already issued statements in support of transgender people, pointedly not backing Rowling.
A handful of staff at publishers Hachette involved in her new children’s book, The Ickabog, also staged a rebellion.
In a joint statement yesterday, gender activist Ugla Stefania Kristjonudottir Jonsdottir – known as Owl – and partner Fox Fisher, a self-styled ‘trans queer artist’, as well as their novelist friend Drew Davies, announced they were not convinced the literary agency ‘supports our rights at all avenues’.
They wrote: ‘This decision is not made lightly, and we are saddened and disappointed it has come to this. After JK Rowling’s ... public comments on transgender issues, we reached out to the agency with an invitation to reaffirm their stance to transgender rights and equality.
‘After our talks with them, we felt that they were unable to commit to any action that we thought was appropriate and meaningful.’
The Blair Partnership said it could not compromise on the ‘fundamental freedom’ of allowing authors the right to express their thoughts and beliefs.
A spokesman said: ‘We believe in freedom of speech for all; these clients have decided to leave because we did not meet their demands to be re-educated to their point of view.
‘We respect their right to pursue what they feel is the correct course of action.’
A fourth author is understood to have also quit the agency but wishes to remain anonymous, The Guardian reported.
Rowling, 54, had first clashed with gender activists after appearing to ‘like’ a post on Twitter saying that trans women are ‘men in dresses’, which she said was an accident. Then last year she faced the biggest backlash of her career after defending a female researcher who was fired for claiming that ‘men cannot change into women’.
This month, Rowling made a jibe at an article titled ‘Creating a more equal post-Covid-19 world for people who menstruate’.
She tweeted: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’
Some staff at Hachette told bosses they were unhappy working on The Ickabog.
In response, they were told that while they would not be forced to work on books they disagreed with, they should not down tools over views that were nothing to do with the book in question, a fairytale.
Hachette issued a statement siding with Rowling’s right to freedom of speech.
Jonsdottir, 29, was one of the youngest people in Iceland to undergo a medical transition in 2010. The co-author of the Trans Teen Survival Guide suggested The Blair Partnership should conduct ‘staff training’ with a group called All About Trans but ‘these requests weren’t met positively by the management’.
Jonsdottir, who was named as one of the BBC’s 100 Women for 2019, and Fisher identify as nonbinary trans people, meaning they prefer to use the pronoun ‘they’.