• JK Rowling has been excluded from a 70-strong book list designed to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
  • The “Harry Potter” author’s first book in the series was rejected in favor of a less well known work, a judge said.
  • Rowling has faced accusations of transphobia in recent years.


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A “Harry Potter” title was dropped from a list of books to commemorate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

It came amid an increasingly fraught public debate over trans rights in which author JK Rowling has been accused of transphobia.

The Big Jubilee Read features 70 books from Commonwealth authors to mark the Queen’s 70-year reign — 10 from every decade from 1952 to 2022.

The list was compiled by BBC Arts and The Reading Agency and includes works by renowned authors and less famous writers.

Rowling, however, did not make the cut.

Rowling was on the long-list chosen by the public

The first of her novels, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” was included in a 153-book long-list for the Big Jubilee Read, based on a public vote. (The book was released in the US with the title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”)

The title was dropped when a panel of industry experts cut the list of 153 down to 70, The Times of London reported.

“There was a big discussion about JK Rowling,” Susheila Nasta, one of the competition judges and emeritus professor of modern literature at Queen Mary University of London, told the newspaper.

“A space was cleared for someone equally as good but whose work was not as well-known,” Nasta said. “There were some very tricky decisions.”

Nasta did not mention the criticism of Rowling’s views, which have made her a polarizing figure in the UK.

BBC Arts said that excluding Rowling from the reading list was not related to her views, the Telegraph reported.

Rowling has faced accusations of transphobia for years

In June 2020, the author mocked an article referring to “people who menstruate” on Twitter and she has defended herself against accusations of transphobia.

She has been called a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) after appearing to say that transgender activism was “erasing the concept of sex,” which she argued is harmful for women and lesbians, as Kat Tenbarge reported for Insider.

Rowling’s comments have prompted some “Harry Potter” film actors to distance themselves from her, as reported by Insider’s Palmer Haasch.

Daniel Radcliffe, for example, wrote an essay for The Trevor Project saying that “trans women are women” and that he felt “compelled to say something.”