Australia: Writers' festival called off amid boycott

Organizers canceled the 2026 Adelaide Writers' Week festival on Tuesday, after some 180 international and Australian authors withdrew from the event in protest of the scrapping of an appearance by an Australian-Palestinian author and academic.

The event's director Louise Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said she was quitting her role on Tuesday, shortly before the festival was called off altogether.

Organizers apologized to novelist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah on Tuesday, saying it regretted how its decision was represented, but the author responded saying she rejected the "disingenuous" apology.

Organizers had announced on January 8 that they would disinvite Abdel-Fattah, because "it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time, so soon after Bondi."

This was a reference to the 15 people killed in December in a shooting targeting a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday that a national day of mourning would be held on January 22 to remember those killed.

Abdel-Fattah called her exclusion "a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship."

The event made no connection to Abdel-Fattah and the attack at Bondi Beach, which police believe was perpetrated by a man inspired by the Islamic State militant group, except to say she was being excluded "given her previous statements."

Born in Australia to Palestinian and Egyptian parents, Abdel-Fattah often writes about Islamophobia and had been invited to speak about her novel Discipline. The book follows two Muslims, a journalist and a university student, navigating issues of censorship in Sydney. She has been a critic of the Israeli government and an advocate for Palestinians throughout the two-year war in Gaza, perhaps most starkly in a video shared in October 2024 when she said that Israel "has and never had a right to exist."

Dozens of participants pulled out of the event in response, eventually including New Zealand's former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, former Greek Finance Minister Janis Varoufakis, Australian author Kathy Lette, Latvian-Australian former journalist Peter Greste and Pulitzer Prize-winning ‌American Percival Everett.

Three board members and director Louise Adler also resigned, with an open letter of protest by Adler published in The Guardian on Tuesday.

"The Adelaide Festival board's decision — despite my strongest opposition — to disinvite the Australian Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers' Week weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn't," she wrote.

Adler also said she was ​disappointed the premier of South Australia state, Peter Malinauskas, had backed the board's decision.

The Adelaide Festival board apologized to Abdel-Fattah when announcing the February event would not go ahead on Tuesday.

It said it had taken the decision "out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event," but that it now saw that it "has created more division."

"We also apologize to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah for how the decision was represented and reiterate this is not about identity or dissent but rather a continuing rapid shift in the national discourse about the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia's worst terror attack in our history," it said.

Abdel-Fattah issued a statement online in response saying the apology was "disingenuous" and "adds insult to injury."

"It is clear that the board's extends to how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself," she wrote. "The board again reiterates the link to a terror attack I had nothing to do with, nor did any Palestinian."