- Update (January 13, 2026) : Since the Board told Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah to go forth, ‘Many authors have since announced they will no longer appear at Adelaide Writers’ Week 2026 and it is the Adelaide Festival’s position that the event can no longer go ahead as scheduled for this year. This is a deeply regrettable outcome.’
As ever, I’m a day late and a dollar short. But it’s noteworthy that, in the space of less than a week, South Australian Labor premier (and ex-Shoppie official) Peter Malinauskas has inadvertently engineered the near-total obliteration of Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) — and, in addition, imperiled the continuation of the 2026 Adelaide Festival as a whole.
Given that the Festival is considered a cultural treasure, that’s quite something.
And all because he didn’t want Palestinian-Australian academic and novelist Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah to speak at AWW.
Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the program was announced in a bizarre statement by the Adelaide Festival Corporation Board — then consisting of marketing executive Tracey Whiting (Chair); former politician Leesa Chesser; local councillor/real estate agent Mary Couros; airport manager Brenton Cox; lawyer Nicholas Linke; media consultant Daniela Ritorto; banker and financial analyst Donny Walford; & government observer Jennifer Fuller — on January 8. The statement didn’t specify precisely why Abdel-Fattah had to be removed, but did invoke the Bondi Beach mass shooting and amorphous ‘cultural sensitivities’.
Unsurprisingly, then, ‘Abdel-Fattah has engaged a lawyer to demand clarity on why she has been removed from the Adelaide Writers’ Week line-up’. Also seeking clarification on the matter is historian Henry Reynolds, and no doubt others are keen to give the Board an opportunity to further elaborate on the reasons for its decision.
Well, what’s left of the Board anyway. Since the shit hit the fan, Whiting, Linke, Ritorto and Walford have resigned from the board, leaving Chesser, Couros, Cox and Fuller holding the bag and presiding over an organisation seemingly operating outside of the governance structure spelled out in the Adelaide Festival Corporation Act 1998. For his part, Malinauskas has expressed the view that it’s all good, and there’s nothing to see here.
And today, AWW director Louise Adler has, perhaps inevitably, announced her own resignation.
What it all means — and how, precisely, this especially distasteful political sausage was made — is examined by former AWW director Jo Dyer in Why is a Labor Premier silencing a writer? (The Shot, January 13, 2026) and Richard Watts provides an overview of the debacle in Director Louise Adler quits as Adelaide Writers Week crisis deepens (ArtsHub, January 13, 2026).
Finally, Tash from Bendigo has published an open letter to Jarvis Cocker of UK band Pulp. The band is scheduled to play a free concert to open the Festival on February 27, but Tash is hoping that, under the circumstances, they might reconsider.
