Randa Abdel-Fattah to headline Australia’s biggest writers fest
Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah will headline Australia’s largest writers’ festival after her removal from Adelaide’s event sparked a national furore.
Source: Randa Abdel-Fattah
Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah will headline Australia’s largest writers’ festival after her removal from another literary event sparked a national furore.
Sydney Writers’ Festival has confirmed the high-profile academic will feature in its 2026 program, inviting attendees to make up their own mind about her writing.
Abdel-Fattah was booted from the line-up at Adelaide Writers’ Week earlier in 2026, sparking a mass boycott by speakers and authors, and culminating in the event’s cancellation and the resignation of board members.
The author was removed from the event – presented as part of the Adelaide Festival – after advocating against the cultural safety of Zionists, although the new board has since apologised and invited her back for the 2027 edition.
A statement from Sydney Writers’ Festival CEO Brooke Webb and artistic director Ann Mossop backed in Abdel-Fattah, adding “without writers, there is no festival”.
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“A festival like ours, which holds freedom of expression as a core value, is not in the business of cancelling or censoring writers,” the statement read.
“A writers’ festival provides a rare and welcome opportunity for readers and writers to come together for nuanced conversations about complex and sometimes difficult topics … readers can make up their own minds about what they would like to attend.”
In a post on social media announcing her appearance at the festival, Abdel-Fattah said: “In the midst of suffocating repression and racism, celebrate the wins. May we all remain undisciplined.”
The organisers’ decision to include her defied comments by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who had questioned Abdel-Fattah’s inclusion in another festival at Newcastle.
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“We respect public figures and members of the community may hold different views … they are entitled to do so,” the Sydney Writers’ Festival statement read.
Abdel-Fattah had defended her comments in the wake of the Adelaide cancellation, denying she had ever said Jewish people are not entitled to cultural safety. She has since been invited to next year’s event and will appear at an alternative festival in Adelaide on March 1.
“But political ideologies cannot use cultural safety as a shield from criticism,” she told ABC Radio in January.
“I’m really fed up with the way my words are being deliberately and maliciously and mendaciously mischaracterised to paint me as an antisemite when I have never, ever expressed any antisemitism.”
She had flagged a defamation case against South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas over comments comparing her to a terrorist sympathiser.
Sydney Writers’ Festival will announce its full 2026 program on March 10. The event will be held in May.
Abdel-Fattah will also be a guest at an alternative writers’ festival in Adelaide next month.
–AAP
