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The Adelaide Festival has apologised unreservedly to Palestinian-Australian writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah after removing her from the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week program, saying it will feature her in the line-up next year.
The about-turn comes after days of turmoil in South Australia, with the cancellation on Tuesday of Adelaide Writers’ Week, and the resignation of festival director Louise Adler after 180 authors quit the line-up, following the Adelaide Festival board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah from the literary festival’s program.
Randa Abdel-Fattah.Credit: AAPIMAGE
In a statement on Thursday, the Adelaide Festival Corporation said: “On 8 January 2026 the Adelaide Festival Corporation published a statement announcing that it had decided to exclude Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from participating as a speaker at Adelaide Writers’ Week this year.
“We stated that this was because it would be culturally insensitive to allow her to participate. We retract that statement. We have reversed the decision and will reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to speak at the next Adelaide Writers’ Week in 2027. We apologise to Dr Abdel-Fattah unreservedly for the harm the Adelaide Festival Corporation has caused her. Intellectual and artistic freedom is a powerful human right. Our goal is to uphold it, and in this instance Adelaide Festival Corporation fell well short.”
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Responding to the news via Instagram, Abdel-Fattah said she accepts the apology “as acknowledgement of our right to speak publicly and truthfully about the atrocities that have been committed against the Palestinian people”.
“I accept this apology as a vindication of our collective solidarity and mobilisation against anti-Palestinian racism, bullying and censorship,” she wrote. “I accept this unreserved apology as acknowledgement of the harm inflicted on our communities.”
Abdel-Fattah said she would consider the board’s invitation to participate in the event in 2027, “but would be there in a heartbeat if Louise Adler was the director again”.
More to come
