Top authors signing up for alt Adelaide Writers’ Week
Headlining names are among those still making the trip to Adelaide in February after Writers’ Week was cancelled. InDaily reveals early details of an alternative event gathering steam with author Randa Abdel-Fattah invited.
Author and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is still coming to Adelaide for a conversation with award-winning historian and author Clare Wright in place of his Writers’ Week appearance after the high-profile literary festival was cancelled.
InDaily understands the afternoon event will also include Cheek Media CEO and author Hannah Ferguson, former Greens leader Dr Bob Brown, Ngarrindjeri Kaurna poet Dominic Guerrera and former ABC reporter Noah Schultz-Byard.
It comes after Australia Institute executive director Richard Dennis announced Varoufakis would still visit Adelaide as part of his national book tour.
The Australia Institute was the first Adelaide Writers’ Week event partner to pull out after a controversial Adelaide Festival Board decision to remove Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from its 2026 lineup.
Since the prior board’s decision on January 8, its members resigned, and the new board has “unreservedly” apologised to Abdel-Fattah and extended an invitation for her to speak at Writers’ Week 2027.
Now details are emerging of alternative events planned to replace the much-loved, high-profile literary festival, with many organised by writers involved in the initial boycott. One organiser said they were organising an event that would normally take six months in six weeks.
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In the same week as Varoufakis’ visit, a new one-off umbrella festival dubbed Constellations has been organised by peak literary body Writers SA, independent publisher Pink Shorts Press and other community groups.
Constellations will run from February 28 to March 5 with dozens of events and featuring a day-long Aboriginal-led event called Rivers of Reason.
Rivers of Reason would fill the gap left by the formerly organised Writers’ Week’s Mob Club event – curated by Dominic Guerrera – which would have featured the largest lineup of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers since the festival’s inception.
Author and poet K. A. Ren Wyld said Rivers of Reason would include local and interstate Aboriginal, Palestinian and Arab writers, with some participating writers including award-winning Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal poet Ali Cobby Eckermann and Narungga poet Natalie Harkin.
Wyld said Randa Abdel-Fattah and other Palestinian authors who were on the original Writers’ Week lineup were invited, but the alternative festival’s full program had not yet been confirmed.
“We really wanted to build on Dominic’s Mob Club, but extend that to include Palestinian writers and to have the conversations of solidarity,” Wyld said.
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“The solidarity between Aboriginal people and Palestinians is really, really strong, it’s decades long. It’s not recent.
“I’m most looking forward to it all clicking in place. This has been massive, I’m organising an event that would normally take six months, but doing it in six weeks with no funding.”
Given the time crunch, organisers have stressed they would not try to replicate former Writers’ Week Director Louise Adler’s programming.
Adler resigned on January 13, saying the event was a “canary in the coalmine” for free speech.
“We’re doing something different, quite deliberately, partly out of sheer capacity, and out of respect for Louise Adler’s programming,” local author and event spokesperson Jennifer Mills said.
“This is a collective response to the frustration and disappointment felt by so many of us at the way this year’s Writers’ Week was lost. We want to create spaces where readers and writers can come together in a show of strength and solidarity.
“Book sales will happen alongside events, but we will also be paying ASA [Australian Society of Authors] rates for writer appearances, so hopefully it will cover that lost income [from Writers’ Week].”
The full Constellations festival program is expected in the first week of February but Mills said it will bring together writers with independent booksellers, including Imprints, Matilda Bookshop and Mostly Books.
They currently have expressions of interest open to other venues, booksellers, libraries and community groups across South Australia who can get involved by either organising their own event, or by having Constellations organisers play matchmaker.
