Adelaide Writers’ Week cancelled after Louise Adler quits as director over Randa Abdel-Fattah dropping

Adelaide Writers’ Week has been cancelled for 2026 six hours after Louise Adler quit as director over academic and novelist Randa Abdel-Fattah being uninvited over a series of inflammatory social media posts calling for the elimination of Israel.

More than 180 writers have quit the annual festival since the Palestinian-Muslim Macquarie University sociologist was dropped from the program on Thursday last week, leading to a board exodus.

“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,” the Adelaide Festival board said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “This is a deeply regrettable outcome.

“We recognise and deeply regret the distress this decision has caused to our audience, artists and writers, donors, corporate partners, the government and our own staff and people.

“We also apologise 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 around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terrorist attack in history.”

Dr Abdel-Fattah refused to accept their apology.

“Because I have too much respect for myself and for my people, for those who have suffered irreparable harm by the board’s conduct, for the brilliant Louise Adler who was forced on principle to resign, I refuse and reject the board’s apology,’ she posted.

“It is disingenuous. It adds insult to injury. It is clear that the board’s regret extends to how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself.”

The Adelaide Festival board last week justified its cancellation of Dr Abdel-Fattah on the grounds it wanted to be “culturally sensitive” in the wake of the December 14 Bondi massacre on the first day of the Jewish Hanukkah holiday that killed 15 innocent people.

“As a board we took this action out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event. Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies,” it said on Tuesday.

The remaining board members are stepping down, with the exception of an Adelaide City Council representative whose term expires on February 2.

Ms Adler, a Jewish woman who is critical of Israel, announced her resignation on Tuesday morning and revealed she was opposed to the board’s decision to cancel Dr Abdel-Fattah, who had been scheduled to discuss her new novel Discipline.

“The Adelaide Festival’s 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 said in a column for The Guardian Australia.

“I cannot be party to silencing writers so, with a heavy heart, I am resigning from my role as the director of the AWW.

“Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us.”

Ms Adler, a former chief executive of Melbourne University Press, likened that approach to a McCarthyist witch hunt, which saw 1950s US senator Joe McCarthy’s hold hearings grilling alleged communist bureaucrats during the Cold War.

“Now religious leaders are to be policed, universities monitored, the public broadcaster scrutinised and the arts starved,” she said.

“Are you or have you ever been a critic of Israel? Joe McCarthy would be cheering on the inheritors of his tactics.”

Ms Adler also took aim at Jewish community groups following the Bondi massacre, mocking their supporters as “stenographers in the media and a spineless political class”.

“The increasingly extreme and repressive efforts of pro-Israel lobbyists to stifle even the mildest criticism has had a chilling effect on free speech and democratic institutions,” she said.

The Adelaide Festival Corporation on Monday morning denied Ms Adler had resigned, after rumours had spread throughout the publishing industry that she had submitted her resignation.

“Louise Adler hasn’t resigned as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week,” a spokeswoman had told The Nightly.

By Monday night, more than 50 writers had pulled out of Adelaide Writers’ Week, scheduled for February 27 to March 15, with former New Zealand Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern joining the likes of Peter Fitzsimons, a former Wallabies international who in 2019 called for rugby union fullback Israel Folau to be sacked for posting anti-gay social media posts based on Biblical passages.

Miles Franklin winners Michelle de Kretser and Melissa Lucashenko and Marxist former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis have also withdrawn, along with former ABC Gruen panelist Jane Caro.

The writers have quit in droves to defend Dr Abdel-Fattah’s right to call for the destruction of Israel and declare Zionists don’t have a right to feel safe.

On October 9, 2023, she mocked moves to remember the 1200 victims of the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel.

“They can light up their colonial buildings. But we know that popular global support is with Palestine and that the genocidal state of Israel has only the ruling elites by its side,” she said on X.

Six months later, on April 10, 2024, she said: “May we see next Eid in a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, whose Labor State Government funds the Adelaide Festival, last week revealed Dr Abdel-Fattah had lobbied the group in 2024 to cancel Jewish American pro-Israel writer Thomas Friedman over a column in The New York Times likening the Middle East to an Animal Kingdom.

While Friedman didn’t appear because of scheduling reasons, Dr Abdel-Fattah told The Guardian Australia she had objected to “Friedman’s views on socially and historically marginalised people who have been dehumanised and discriminated against by the use of such racist tropes”.

SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels late on Tuesday announced a new Adelaide Festival board to be chaired by Judy Potter, who previously led it from 2016 to 2023.