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Winnipeg Free Press

Turn books into mushrooms — like magic

Raymond Lyttle would disappear into the wizardly world of Harry Potter any chance he could get in elementary school. He recalls being eight years old, burrowing into a haskap bush at recess and cracking open one of the books to escape the bullying he experienced at school as a closeted queer child. Lyttle would open one button on his winter jacket, just wide enough to get one hand through and flip the pages so he could avoid getting frostbite. Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Oh Doughnuts owner Amanda Kinden was inspired to repurpose Harry Potter books into something delicious. 'I fell in love with reading pretty quickly and would burn through books voraciously. I found it to be a really safe place,' Lyttle says. He read the entire series — seven books published between 1997 and 2007 — nine times in order; he's lost count how many times out of order. The relationships between child wizard Harry Potter and the other characters, and the familiarity of the world created by British author J.K. Rowling, kept Lyttle coming back for more. But when Rowling's focus shifted from being a writer to campaigning against the transgender community, Lyttle, a 24-year-old trans man, says he couldn't return to the books and support the author who was attacking his identity. 'It felt sort of like learning that a place that you had cared about as a young person had burned down or had somehow became desecrated. Whatever value was there, I could never go back to that in the same way,' he says. He removed all the books from his home, giving them to someone else so they could read them without financially supporting Rowling. On Sunday, Winnipeg shop Oh Doughnuts will take the rejection of Rowling's work in a new direction, hosting a workshop called Turf the TERF, where people can bring any unwanted Harry Potter books to its 326 Broadway location and learn how grow edible oyster mushrooms on them. TERF, which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist, is a term used to refer to a group of feminists who refuse to recognize trans women as sisters and reject their inclusion in women's spaces. Rowling's first foray into the anti-trans movement was when she 'absent-mindedly liked' a post on X (then Twitter) calling trans women 'men in dresses' in 2018. That snowballed into years of posts, reposts and comments targeting and attacking the trans community, earning her the TERF label. Oh Doughnuts owner Amanda Kinden was inspired to host the event by a post from the U.K.-based Instagram account which hosted a similar workshop in May to protest Rowling. While Kinden hasn't read the Harry Potter books herself, her partner grew up reading the series, but became 'very conflicted' when the author started ramping up her anti-trans rhetoric. 'Let's make something productive and delicious out of something that maybe was created with a bit of hate towards trans folks,' Kinden says. Kinden connected with Tom Nagy of River City Mushrooms, who sells mushrooms and grow kits, to throw their own event to decompose the Harry Potter books while raising awareness about the ways Rowling is harming the trans community. Instagram An a U.K. event hosted by books were made into mushroom grow kits. Growing mushrooms from books isn't a new trend, Nagy explains. A waterlogged old paperback novel can break down the same way as a damp, rotten log and create the perfect conditions for fungi. The metaphor of the process isn't lost on Nagy. He views mushrooms as nature's recycling program and as symbols for the cyclical nature of life and death. 'They're essentially initiating the future by decomposing the past. You're taking a perspective or ideology that doesn't really match with what people are realizing about human nature and society and transforming it into something different,' he says. Hearing about the Turf the TERF event, Mavis Reimer, a University of Winnipeg English professor and the director for the Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures, chuckles. 'It strikes me as a really smart protest. It's a gentle and pretty peaceful protest,' says Reimer, who studies children's literature and its impact on media and pop culture. Destroying books has been a routine protest against literature throughout history. When Indian-British author Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, it ignited book burnings, death threats and protests across the Muslim world, owing to its perceived blasphemy. However, Reimer sees the mushroom workshop as a nuanced revision of book protests. While book burnings are usually spearheaded by people holding power to create a spectacle that can instil fear in onlookers, she says this protest focuses on repurposing and recycling the books. 'Growing is such a quiet metaphor, and it's a slow metaphor, and it's a metaphor of changing something into something else. When you use the books to grow mushrooms, those particular physical books are destroyed, but they're actually commuted and transformed into something else,' she says. 'Gardening with Harry Potter books is different to burning Harry Potter books.' Strong reactions such as this happen because words and stories are powerful, says Reimer. Often in children's literature, a book's author is more connected to the text than other genres, as authors often do readings in schools and book talks aimed at kids when a new novel is released, she says. It's difficult to separate the art from the artist when someone with Rowling's notoriety doesn't try to distance herself from the franchise — especially financially, Reimer says. Celebrity culture blurs the lines even more; Rowling was an early adopter of social media channels and has a following of millions of people. Instagram An edition of Harry Potter is prepped to eventually sprout mushrooms at a U.K. event. Kinden says she can't separate Rowling from her work because the author has dedicated money earned from the Harry Potter franchise to take away trans rights. In response to a 2022 comment criticizing her transphobic stances, Rowling posted on X: 'I read my most recent royalty cheques and find the pain goes away pretty quickly.' Rowling also began using the wealth generated from her books to influence policy. When the author introduced the spellbinding world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, it was met with meteoric success. The franchise spawned online fandoms, video games and films — all of which fed into the commercial success of the books; Rowling has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. In 2024, U.K. newspaper The Telegraph reported Rowling donated at least 70,000 pounds to For Women Scotland, an anti-trans feminist group, when it challenged a U.K. Supreme Court ruling that said biological men could legally become women and share legal protections. Monthly What you need to know now about gardening in Winnipeg. An email with advice, ideas and tips to keep your outdoor and indoor plants growing. In April, the court subsequently passed a ruling limiting the definition of a woman to biological sex and excluding trans women from discrimination protections. In response to the ruling, Rowling posted on X: 'I love it when a plan comes together' with a picture of herself smoking a cigar and holding a cocktail. Former fan Lyttle believes Rowling's actions overrule any legacy the books had, because she's denying trans people their humanity. 'A mushroom isn't less valuable than this book. We've just decided that a mushroom is more valuable than this possession,' he says. 'It's better as fuel for something new and beautiful than as something we look at that makes us sad.'