Read the room: Guerilla Writers’ Week is happening
Organisers of an alternative Adelaide Writers’ Week are rapidly pushing ahead with plans for 2026 after winning venue support from Adelaide City Council on Monday night. Devastated literary figures have been working hard behind the scenes since the loved event was cancelled.
Organisers of a guerilla Adelaide Writers’ Week are “very confident” they can pull together an event in February or March and are pushing ahead with planning after the City of Adelaide voted to “immediately enter discussions” with Writers SA to help with its organisation.
Margot Lloyd, who is co-director of independent publisher Pink Shorts Press, said those wanting to stage the event were “very happy with the result” of last night’s special council meeting, including venue offers of city council buildings or the park lands. Lloyd had previously told InDaily that there had been “a lot of interest” from writers and stakeholders.
“Our main concern from the get-go with an alternative writers’ festival in 2026 is that we were going to have to pull things together incredibly quickly, and venues at this time of year are very hard to come across,” Lloyd said.
“So, getting venue support from Adelaide City Council is massive for us and a really wonderful result.”
Lloyd said those pushing ahead with a new event were “very confident” they could pull it together despite the council voting down a suggested funding commitment of up to $250,000.
“A lot of people emailed us with support early on (for an alternative event)”, she said, adding that sponsors of the official week have indicated they would support it going ahead.
She said that Writers’ SA would be the “nexus point” of groups wanting to take part in the event, while Pink Shorts Press “will be stepping back into the general crowd of South Australian literary organisations who want to take part”.
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The development comes after Adelaide Writers’ Week was cancelled by the Adelaide Festival Board after the majority of authors scheduled to participate pulled out following the board’s controversial decision to drop Sydney-born Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Abdel-Fattah had been criticised for her anti-Zionist views, including saying “Zionists have no right to cultural safety”, with Premier Peter Malinauskas backing the board’s decision.
She described the decision to remove her as a “blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism”, the fallout leading to the resignation of Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler, the resignation of the Adelaide Festival board, the eventual cancellation of the festival and the appointment of a new board, which apologised to Abdel-Fattah.
Last night, Adelaide City Council held a special meeting called by councillors Keiran Snape, Janet Giles and Eleanor Freeman, where they heard from former History Trust CEO Greg Mackie, Writers SA CEO Claire Hicks and Adelaide University Master’s student Phil Kalogeras.
“In response to what has happened, a group of people from the writing and publishing and book-selling community came together to try and look at ways we could support writers who are no longer able to present due to, originally, the withdrawal and subsequently, the cancellation of Writers’ Week,” Hicks said in support of the new event.
She said that the “pillar activities” of the guerilla festival would include a First Nations-led program led by Kaurna man Dominic Guerrera and a poetry program curated by Mike Ladd.
Hicks said that Writers’ SA would run the infrastructure for the event, including setting up an online portal, a ticketing system, establishing an advisory subcommittee and being responsible for any funds.
Council voted last night to “immediately enter into discussions with the not for profit Writers SA to assist the organisation with an alternative event/s in February/March 2026”.
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It also agreed to “make available to the alternative event/s any available venue such as the Town Hall, any council-owned or controlled building and public space, including the Park Lands”.
However, the call for a commitment to contribute up to $250,000 towards the event was voted down.
Snape said that “the temporary demise of the Writers’ Week is actually quite a significant loss to our city – it’s a cultural loss and is an economic loss”.
“These series of events, under the umbrella of Writers SA, a well-known, well-regarded South Australian not-for-profit, will help fill the cultural void left by the loss of Writers’ Week, while providing important spaces for writers to platform their works, local bookstores, printers and publishers to showcase their wares,” he said.
Councillor Eleanor Freeman said “that we are all unified … in this shared disappointment that this really important event for Adelaide isn’t happening at all”.
“I think this is just about starting that conversation, seeing what is possible, and again, seeing if we can mitigate some of the disappointment that I’m sure we all feel as a result of the last two weeks,” she said.
There was opposition from Deputy Lord Mayor Carmel Noon, who attempted to introduce a failed foreshadowed motion, saying Snape’s motion “flies in the face of council’s role and sets up a very disturbing precedent”.
“I will not be supporting this in any way tonight. It is fraught with issues, it sets a precedent that, like I said, is quite disturbing – I think this will come to bite us on the bum,” she said.
Councillor Henry Davis said that “this motion is a masterclass on how a council loses credibility”.
“We have called a special meeting at public expense to debate spending up to a quarter of a million dollars of ratepayers’ money without a resolution from the Writers’ SA board, without a budget, without a formal application, without a clear plan and without certainty of any funding that you will get,” he said.
