A handful of Writers’ Week speakers will be paid despite this year’s event being cancelled, the new Adelaide Festival board confirmed today.

The new Adelaide Festival board has made a stunning about-turn, retracting its previous statement about Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah and inviting her to speak at the 2027 Writers’ Week. Abdel-Fattah responds as planning for a guerilla festival continues.

UPDATED: Writer Randa Abdel-Fattah has launched defamation proceedings against the Premier, saying his comments about her Writers’ Week cancellation “terrified” her. Malinaukas responds.

Adelaide Festival has confirmed the country’s only free literary festival has been scrapped in 2026, with remaining board members resigning. The writer at the centre of it all says “I am not the story. Palestine is.”

Online lobbying of a beloved Britpop band scheduled to headline Adelaide Festival is mounting over the Writers’ Week controversy – while WOMAD faces its own campaign to have a Palestinian DJ dropped from its lineup.

Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler has resigned, with scathing words of warning for fellow arts colleagues.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – who was leader during the Christchurch terror attack – has pulled out of Adelaide’s Writers’ Week. Meanwhile, Dr Abdel-Fattah has called in a top lawyer over her exclusion.

A component of Adelaide Festival’s contemporary music program has been abandoned by artists in the wake of the board’s decision to remove a Palestinian author from the Writers’ Week lineup. SA faces millions of dollars of lost economic benefit if the festival collapses.

Premier Peter Malinauskas today assured the Adelaide Festival board was still functional despite four board members – including the chair – resigning over the Writers’ Week lineup controversy. The Greens warned the event was “not the Premier’s book club”.

Adelaide Festival is in disarray after the board chair joined three board members to hand in their resignations after days of controversy over a Palestinian advocate being pulled from the Writers’ Week lineup.

Amid the Adelaide Writers’ Week backlash, a letter has emerged indicating a Jewish writer was not “cancelled” from the speaker lineup by the board in 2024, as the Premier had claimed.

Eleven of the state’s former Adelaide Festival leaders have written a scathing letter criticising the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision to drop a Palestinian author from the Writers’ Week lineup. Read the confirmed list of authors who have now pulled out.

A multitude of high-profile authors have joined the flood of names demolishing the Writers’ Week lineup. The Premier continues to back the board’s decision to drop a Palestinian writer.

A guerrilla festival could be on the cards as boycotting writers discuss protest options and city councillors explore cutting funding.

Writers’ Week staff have rejected the board’s decision to axe a prominent Palestinian author from its lineup, in an email to authors seen exclusively by InDaily. More than 30 Australian and international writers have declared they are now boycotting the high-profile literary festival.

The Adelaide Festival board has cut a Palestinian advocate from its 2026 Writers’ Week lineup, claiming it was not “culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”. One prominent backer of Writers’ Week has immediately withdrawn its support.

In the wake of the Adelaide Writers’ Week fallout, local author and InReview editor Walter Marsh tells how “this episode has left our small literary pond feeling just as sick” as the algal bloom threatening the state’s tourism industry.

Adelaide Committee chief Sam Dighton calls for unity as the Writers’ Week controversy causes “further division” – arguing SA should be defining itself as a beacon amid global uncertainty.

The Adelaide Festival Board’s decision over Writers’ Week has sparked strong reactions from readers. Read the Letters to the Editor.

InDaily readers are passionate in their views on the cancellation of Writers’ Week after a Palestinian author was controversially dropped from the lineup.