Australian writers’ festival apologises to Palestinian author after boycott

An Australian arts festival has apologised to Randa Abdel-Fattah after it was forced to cancel its entire writers’ week programme when 180 writers withdrew from the event in solidarity with the Palestinian Australian author.

The board of Adelaide Festival said on Thursday it was retracting its earlier decision to exclude Abdel-Fattah “from participating as a speaker at Adelaide Writers’ Week this year”.

“We have reversed the decision and will reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at the next Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2027,” the board said in a statement, apologising “unreservedly for the harm” it had caused to her.

“Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right,” the board said, acknowledging that it had fallen “well short” of upholding that right.

Abdel-Fattah, an award-winning author of 11 novels, said in her own statement that she accepted the board’s apology and would consider the invitation to participate next year.

“I accept this apology as acknowledgement of our right to speak publicly and truthfully about the atrocities that have been committed against the Palestinian people” and “a vindication of our collective solidarity and mobilisation against anti-Palestinian racism, bullying and censorship”, she said in a statement shared on social media.

Abdel-Fattah, who is also a lawyer and sociologist, said she would agree to appear as a speaker “in a heartbeat” if Louise Adler, who resigned as the director of Adelaide Writers’ Week in protest at the board’s decision, “was the director again”, but said she had not yet decided if she would accept the invitation to appear next year.

Abdel-Fattah also said the board’s initial decision to cancel her participation highlighted problems, including “the need for urgent antiracism education” and “the need for public institutions to have safeguards against political interference by lobbyists”.

Thursday’s apology came a day after the board said in a separate statement that this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week “can no longer go ahead as scheduled” after “many authors … announced they will no longer appear.”

The statement said the initial withdrawal of Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak was “not about identity or dissent” but “around the breadth of freedom of expression in our nation following Australia’s worst terror attack in history”, in reference to the Bondi Beach attack, which killed 15 people at a Jewish celebration in December.

Australian police have said the two men accused of carrying out the deadly shooting were “inspired” by ISIL (ISIS). The attack came five years after an Australian gunman killed 51 Muslims while they were praying at their mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Adler, who resigned as director of the writers’ week after the board overrode her decision to invite Abdel-Fattah, said this week that at least 180 authors had withdrawn from this year’s programme in protest.

The authors who said they would no longer participate included prominent international and Australian writers, such as Zadie Smith, M Gessen, Yanis Varoufakis, and Helen Garner, as well as former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Adler questioned the considerable influence that “boards composed of individuals with little experience in the arts” could wield over programming, and being “blind to the moral implications of abandoning the principle of freedom of expression”.

Adler, who is Jewish, also expressed concern that “protests are being outlawed, free speech is being constrained and politicians are rushing through processes to ban phrases and slogans” in the wake of “the Bondi atrocity”, with “alarming insouciance”.