{"id":13820,"date":"2026-01-13T05:49:53","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T05:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/top-australian-writers-festival-canceled-after-palestinian-author-barred\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T05:49:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T05:49:53","slug":"top-australian-writers-festival-canceled-after-palestinian-author-barred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/top-australian-writers-festival-canceled-after-palestinian-author-barred\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Australian writers’ festival canceled after Palestinian author barred"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of Australia’s top writers’ festivals was cancelled on Tuesday, after 180 authors boycotted the event and its ‌director resigned saying she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author and warned moves to ban protests and slogans after the Bondi Beach mass shooting threatened free speech.<\/p>\n

Louise ⁠Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors, said on Tuesday ‍she was quitting her role at the Adelaide Writers’ ‍Week in February, ‍following a decision by the festival’s board to disinvite a Palestinian-Australian author.<\/p>\n

The ⁠novelist and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said the move to bar her was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism ​and censorship”.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday announced a national day of mourning would be held on January 22 to remember the 15 people killed in last month’s shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n

Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State ⁠militant group, and the incident sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism, and prompted state and federal government moves to tighten hate speech laws.<\/p>\n

The Adelaide Festival board said on Tuesday its decision last week to disinvite Abdel-Fattah, on the grounds it would not be culturally sensitive for her to appear at the literary event “so soon after Bondi”, was made “out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event”.<\/p>\n

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“Instead, this decision has created more division and for that we express our sincere apologies,” the board said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The event would not go ahead and remaining board members will step down, it added.<\/p>\n

Former New Zealand Prime Minister ​Jacinda Ardern, British author Zadie Smith, Australian author Kathy Lette, Pulitzer Prize-winning American Percival Everett and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are ⁠among the authors who said they would no longer appear at the festival in South Australia state, Australian media reported.<\/p>\n

The festival board on Tuesday apologised to Abdel-Fattah for “how the decision was ‍represented”.<\/p>\n

“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 terror attack in history,” it added.<\/p>\n

Adler earlier wrote in ‌The Guardian that the board’s decision to disinvite Abdel-Fattah “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”.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t© Thomson Reuters 2026.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

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Top Australian writers’ festival canceled after Palestinian author barred<\/div>\n

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One of Australia’s top writers’ festivals was cancelled on Tuesday, after 180 authors boycotted the event and its ‌director resigned saying she could not be party to silencing a Palestinian author and warned moves to ban protests and slogans after the Bondi Beach mass shooting threatened free speech. Louise ⁠Adler, the Jewish daughter of Holocaust…<\/p>\n

Read More “Top Australian writers’ festival canceled after Palestinian author barred”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}