Wayson Choy applauds JK Rowling regarding the Gellert Grindelwald outing

Wayson Choy, the Trillium Award-winning writer who assumed the unofficial position as Canada's premier gay novelist after Timothy Findley's death, says that JK Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore and Grindelwald were former gay lovers is of enormous societal importance.

"She's taking a major leap in bringing human history up to date," he says from his Toronto home, where he's working on his latest memoir. "It means that she has the courage to suggest that even in children's books, the real world, with its adult intrigues, can be respected by children. I think her revealing this is why her characters have some kind of third dimension that we don't know about entirely, but is always there, that makes them more vivid than cartoon characters.

"She's honouring the complexity of the human being," he says, "and no child should be deprived of that truth."