Festival director quits over ‘silencing of writers’Farid FaridAAPTue, 13 January 2026 7:41AM
The director of an embattled writers festival has quit after a Palestinian-Australian academic was barred from appearing by the board, triggering a boycott of 100 authors.
Louise Adler announced her resignation, saying she had fought against the Adelaide Festival’s board decision to dump Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers’ Week.
“I cannot be party to silencing writers so, with a heavy heart, I am resigning from my role as the director of the AWW,” she wrote in an opinion piece published in The Guardian.
“Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us.”
Dr Abdel-Fattah lamented Adler’s decision.
“I’m gutted that Louise Adler has been left with no choice but to resign because a cowardly, feckless board threw an entire festival under the bus to placate the bad faith agenda of politicians and pro-Israel lobbyists,” she told AAP on Tuesday.
Dr Abdel-Fattah, who has authored a dozen books, was due to appear at February’s festival but was axed citing “cultural sensitivity”.
The festival board said “national grief” and “community tensions” sparked by the Bondi mass shooting on December 14, where 15 people were killed, prompted its decision to remove the author.
Three board members have quit and the chair, Tracey Whiting, also followed suit in the fiasco that ensued with the majority of invited speakers pulling out.
Some of the prominent speakers who withdrew from the festival include former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, author Trent Dalton, British novelist Zadie Smith, journalist M Gessen and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
Adler, a renowned publisher who previously led Melbourne University Publishing, had helmed the writers’ festival since 2022, helping maintain it as one of the premier events of its type nationally.
The daughter of German Jewish immigrants, her grandfather was murdered at Birkenau.She has previously described Israeli government policy as “increasingly fascistic”.
Dr Abdel-Fattah characterised the decision to dump her as “calculated” on the grounds that being Palestinian would act as “an emotional provocation”.
“It is hard to view the timing as accidental rather than a calculated decision … to reinforce the link between me and the Bondi atrocity,” she told AAP on Monday.
“It is clear attempts to police or silence speech … will be met with a strong response from the writing and creative community.”
The troubled festival is due to begin on February 28.
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