Festival board members quit after author’s cancellation from Writers’ Week

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-11/fallout-amid-writers-week-cancellation-of-randa-abdel-fattah/106217646

23 Comments

  1. >South Australia’s Premier Peter Malinauskas — who has “wholeheartedly” backed the board’s position — elaborated on his involvement in the matter, saying he offered his “clear and plain” opinion to the board but did not instruct it to change the Writers’ Week schedule.

    So he backed the board’s position to cancel the festlval? Lol.

  2. Being naive here I know but I don’t get it. We can read these writers books, or newspaper columns, and if we are real fanboys we can follow their soc med or substack or whatever. Going to a writers festival can be great because hopefully the writers will speak about matters of interest beyond just their books or expand on their topics of expertise. So unless we ban all their books or newspaper columns then we can’t eradicate their work.

    Honestly why cancel their speech? It’s already out there. The fun of being in a writers festival audience is having the chance to ask a question or, if you’re lucky, hear thoughtful questions from others. (Mind you this needs a chair with an iron hand, people usually go on pointless waffles.) And if you don’t like the writer you just don’t go. Or even better, go because maybe the writer will provoke your thinking and you’ll have great conversations with your mates afterwards.

  3. RecentEngineering123 on

    What a bloody mess. This is stupid. Forget the whole thing I reckon, it’s broken and incompetent people need to be gotten rid of and start again.

  4. I_Am-Jacks_Colon on

    She changed her profile pic to a Palestinian paraglider graphic in the immediate aftermath of October 7th.

    She said “if you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety.”

    She said she disagrees that Hamas is a terrorist organisation.

    But no problems at all with her spewing her bile in the wake of the Bondi attack for you people though right?

    Of course only a child killer zionazi would have a problem with her correct?

    Let’s just proceed with business as usual.

  5. FFS! So many people who are so stupid. I expected more of the Writers Festival. When will they realise that criticism if Israel is not criticism of Judaism. *No **country** should ever be above criticism.*

  6. serotoninsickness on

    She changed her profile picture to a Hamas fighter paragliding the day after they launched an attack that killed over a thousand Jews. Other pro-palestinian writers, including those who have now withdrawn weren’t excluded. I’m sure anyone glorifying 9/11 would be similarly excluded from cultural events. 

  7. >”As a matter of basic procedural fairness to Dr Abdel-Fattah, please identify with specificity each of the ‘past statements’ made by her on which the board relied in making its decision.”

    Asking for specificity like this will get you banned from another Australian sub.

  8. Guest_User1971 on

    Anyone clutching their pearls at Randa ‘Jews have no right to safety’ Abdel-Fattah getting de-platformed two weeks after 15 Australian Jews were killed by two men who wholeheartedly agreed with her needs to take a long hard look at themselves.

    Hamas supporters like Abdel-Fattah don’t get a free pass to Australian cultural and political relevance just because they self-identify as ‘writers’ and ‘activists’ speaking about the ‘Muslim experience’. Most Muslims detest Hamas and would happily see them all dead.

    Hitler was a writer and activist. Artist too. If he popped up today and wore the right statement glasses and black skivvy he’d probably be a darling of the Australian cultural left, making appearances at festivals to promote his new books ‘The Romans Called It Judea not JEWdea’ and ‘From The River To The Sea with Zyklon-B’.

  9. circadian_light on

    Chalk it down to my own literary ignorance, but until this whole controversy, I’d not heard of Randa Abdel-Fattah. It’s drawn so much more attention to her and her comments than if they’d just let things be.

    Streisand Effect, anyone?

  10. Cultural_Wallaby208 on

    What’s a little frightening to me is: they knew this would happen. Bendigo Writers Festival had the same thing happened and is now taking a whole year off due to the “damage to their reputation”.

    They knew this could possibly cancel the whole event, yet the power of the Zionist lobby is such that they did it anyway. That’s bloody terrifying.