Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah has publicly rejected an apology from Adelaide Festival's board, after it removed her from Adelaide Writers' Week 2026, which will now not go ahead.
The board announced on Tuesday that it would cancel this year's festival, following the resignation of director Louise Adler and a mass boycott from invited authors protesting Abdel-Fattah's removal.
"Because I have too much respect for myself and for my people, for those who have suffered irreparable harm by the board's conduct, for the brilliant Louise Adler who was forced on principle to resign, I refuse and reject the board's apology, Abdel-Fattah wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.
"It is disingenuous, it adds insult to injury," she said, adding that the apology only addressed "how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself".
The board said its decision on 8 January to rescind her invitation had been made "out of respect for a community experiencing the pain from a devastating event," but acknowledged it had instead created division.
"We recognise and deeply regret the distress this decision has caused to our audience, artists and writers, donors, corporate partners, the government and our own staff and people," it said in a statement released on Tuesday.
"We also apologise to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah for how the decision was represented and reiterate 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."
The board initially claimed past statements from Abdel-Fattah meant it would not be "culturally sensitive" for her to appear at the festival so soon after the antisemitic terror attack at Sydney's Bondi Beach on 14 December.
Abdel-Fattah described the board's justification for her removal as explicitly targeting her identity.
"I think in this moment we must also pay close attention to some of the fault lines that are being drawn," she said.
"We have to be very careful about the way the narrative is being framed to equate all speech as equal, undermining the right of marginalised people to call for the cancellation of those who incite harm in the name of liberal principles of the so-called marketplace of ideas — as we all know, Indigenous artists and writers of colour pay the price for."
'Decision wasn't about identity or dissent'
In its statement on Tuesday, the Adelaide Festival board said Adelaide Writers' Week 2026 could no longer proceed after widespread withdrawals by writers, commentators and academics following Abdel-Fattah's removal. Around 180 participants had reportedly withdrawn in protest.
The South Australian government announced Judy Potter would become the new board leader. She previously led the board from 2016-2023.
The cancellation follows last week's announcement that Abdel-Fattah's appearance at the literary festival had been cancelled. She is the daughter of Palestinian and Egyptian parents, and has been a vocal critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
She has previously faced criticism from the Coalition, as well as some Jewish organisations and media outlets, over comments about Israel and Zionism, including a widely reported post in which she claimed Zionists had "no claim or right to cultural safety".
Abdel-Fattah has said her objections and critiques of Zionism, a political ideology, have been conflated with antisemitism.
She has also said her posting of an image of a Palestinian paratrooper soon after the October 7 attacks, a move that has also been criticised, was intended as a symbolic expression of besieged Palestinians "breaking out of their prison", and that she did not support the killing of civilians. She said she was unaware at the time of the scale or severity of the attacks.
At the time, the board said it was "not culturally sensitive" to proceed, a decision Abdel-Fattah described as "outrageous", saying she "cannot believe" she had to state she had "nothing to do with the Bondi atrocities".
Legal challenge under consideration
Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers, who is representing Abdel-Fattah, said the collapse of the event was foreseeable once the board rescinded his client's invitation, but stressed that its inevitability did not diminish the seriousness of the outcome.
"The cancellation of the whole event was inevitable," he told SBS News, adding it was "an incredibly sad thing to have happened and it was also completely unnecessary".
He said responsibility lay with both the board and the South Australian government, arguing that the consequences flowed from their decisions rather than from any conduct by Abdel-Fattah.
"None of this has anything to do with Randa," he said.
"She was looking forward to sitting in the sunshine talking about her new book," he said, referring to her 2025 novel Discipline, which explores the experience of the Palestinian diaspora in Australia.
Bradley said Abdel-Fattah was now weighing her legal position.
"Randa will consider her options as she is with everything else that's going on," he said.
He said "her rights have been very, very severely compromised" and she had been "done a lot of harm, none of which she provoked or deserved".
Premier defends stance as criticism mounts
Meanwhile, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has faced questions over whether he sought to influence the board’s decisions regarding Adelaide Writers' Week.
He has rejected those assertions, telling reporters on Tuesday that the festival was "strictly an independent exercise" and "not a government-run event".
"What writers' week does with this community is up to them," he said earlier on Tuesday.
"That's their event, their decisions."
Responding to questions about whether he'd exerted political influence, he drew a hypothetical comparison.
"Can you imagine if a far-right Zionist walked into a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people? Can you imagine that as the premier of this state, I would actively support a far-right Zionist going to writers' week and speaking hateful rhetoric?" he said in an emotional exchange with one reporter.
"Of course, I wouldn't, but the reverse has happened in this instance, and I'm not going to support that either."
Bradley described the comments as "one of the most extraordinary statements I've ever heard from a public official, about a private citizen".
"To come out with something so incendiary and unprovoked — I don't know why he's done that, it's a mystery," he said.
The remarks came hours after Louise Adler resigned as director of Adelaide Writers' Week, warning of a broader erosion of artistic freedom.
Acting Greens leader and arts spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young described the cancellation as "a dark day for the arts in South Australia", saying: "Premier Peter Malinauskas must apologise for his intervention which has helped lead to this fiasco."
"As Louise Adler has warned, writers' week is the canary in the coalmine."
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