Best-selling Australian author Trent Dalton withdraws from Adelaide Writers’ Week

18 hours ago 3

One of Australia’s best-selling authors has joined dozens of writers in withdrawing from Adelaide Writers’ Week following the Adelaide Festival board’s decision to remove Palestinian-Australian writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the line-up.

Trent Dalton, the author of novels including the 2018 smash hit Boy Swallows Universe, confirmed to this masthead on Saturday that he would not take part in the literary festival, but did not offer further comment.

Boy Swallows Universe author Trent Dalton.

The Adelaide Festival board said on Thursday that, while it was not suggesting “in any way” that Abdel-Fattah or her writing had any connection with the deadly terrorist attack at Bondi in December, given her past statements “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”.

When asked on Saturday if the writers’ week would go ahead, and how many authors had now pulled out, an Adelaide Festival spokeswoman declined to comment. Dalton’s publisher was also contacted for comment.

Dalton was ranked as the second-highest-selling Australian fiction author of the year in 2025, with his most recent novel, Gravity Let Me Go, selling 74,530 copies.

A recent Netflix adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe has taken his story – based on his own childhood growing up with a drug-addicted mother and a heroin-dealing stepfather – to the world. It also propelled sales of his novel past the million mark.

He has joined high-profile writers including star British author Zadie Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer Percival Everett, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and American journalist Masha Gessen in withdrawing from the event.

Other prominent Australian writers who have withdrawn include Helen Garner, Michelle de Kretser, Melissa Lucashenko, Hannah Kent, Evelyn Araluen, Jane Caro and Peter Greste, as well as Peter FitzSimons and Kate Halfpenny, writers for this masthead.

Booker Prize-winning Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan, while not on the line-up, has expressed support for those who have boycotted.

One of the country’s largest and best loved literary festivals, AWW is scheduled to run from February 28 to March 5. However, on Friday the program was missing from its website, with the note: “In respect of the wishes of the writers who have recently indicated their withdrawal from the writers’ week 2026 program, we have temporarily unpublished the list of participants and events while we work through changes.”

Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler has not spoken publicly since the board made its announcement on Thursday. This year is her fourth in the role and many of the writers who have withdrawn paid tribute to her work.

Concerns about the wording of the Adelaide Festival board’s statement – citing the “cultural sensitivity” of a Palestinian-Australian author appearing at the event so soon after the shootings at the iconic Sydney beach last month – were raised by many authors.

Last year this masthead reported on concerns raised by a group called the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism, also known as 5A, about Abdel-Fattah’s previous public commentary ahead of her appearance at the Bendigo Writers Festival. It referenced a series of her social media posts, including ones it asserted had said Zionists had “no claim to cultural safety” and that institutions that considered “fragile feelings of Zionists” were “abhorrent”.

In 2024, she was accused of doxing Jewish creatives and has also been criticised for use of an image of a parachutist under the Palestinian flag following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas this week said he supported the festival board’s decision. “When asked for my opinion, I was happy to make it clear that the state government did not support the inclusion of Dr Abdel-Fattah on the Adelaide Writers’ Week program.”

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