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Author TK Klune has, in the acknowledgements of 2024’s Somewhere Beyond the Sea, declared himself to be “the anti-JK Rowling,” a concept that thrills fans but, perhaps, confuses those who aren’t entirely up-to-date on the Harry Potter creator’s descent into transphobic bigotry in recent years. Thankfully, Klune is happy to clarify his position.

“I am not going to tell you what you can and cannot read. I will never do that,” Klune told a rapt audience at his Emerald City Comic Con 2025 spotlight panel. “I was at the Bookmarks Festival in Winston-Salem as their keynote speaker, and after I gave my speech where I talked a significant amount about how much JK Rowling is just an overall terrible person, I had a gentleman on stage with me asking a question of, ‘Well, my thirteen-year-old non-binary kid just discovered Harry Potter. Should I take the book from them?’ And I said, ‘Never. You never take a book from a kid. But if your thirteen-year-old knows himself well enough to know that they're non-binary, give them the facts, give them, this is what JK Rowling thinks about your community, about people like you. Let them make the decision if they want to continue reading or not. I am never going to try to take away your joy that you have when you got to read Harry Potter.’”

He continued, “I stood in line for the last Harry Potter book when that came out. That's something that cannot be taken away, the joy of the book that you read at the time. However, JK Rowling is basically a billionaire who has made it her life's work to punch down on the most marginalized community, one of the most marginalized communities in the world was some of the highest suicide rates in the world. Can you imagine? You're a trans person and you grew up reading Harry Potter, where it was about standing up for what's right against the forces of evil and everything that was dark and wrong with the world, only to have the author turn into the villain that she wrote about? How is that fair to trans people or the trans community or the LGBTQ community that supported their words that saw themselves in her books?”

There is, he suggested, a way to let people continue to enjoy (or discover) the books without supporting Rowling financially. “If your kids want to read Harry Potter, go to the freaking library. The library is there for you to do that. Buy it secondhand,” he argued. “What you can do individually is what I try to do. If somebody doesn't know, if somebody's like, ‘Oh, I love JK Rowling, I love Harry Potter.’ You can be like, ‘Cool. She sucks, here's why she sucks.’ Let them make their own decision. You can't force people to stop reading books. And I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not telling you to tell people to stop reading books. That's never what I want to do. But at the same time, we don't need to give money to people who actively use that money and their platform to hurt other people. That is not what we should be doing in any way, shape, or form.”

An author who supports marginalized people and doesn't want to control what other people are reading or thinking? Klune really is the anti-JK Rowling after all.

Seattle's ECCC 2025 is coming up faster than you think! Keep up to date with our guide to all the Artist's Alley & Writer's Block celebrities, all the major panels, a grunge-themed playlist for the grunge-themed con, our personal recs for the key things to do at ECCC, where to find us at ECCC, and even what to do while you're in Seattle for the event. Reserve your passes as soon as you can!