‘Sweet victory against Premiers’: Abdel-Fattah wins Vic literary award
The Palestinian-Australian author at the centre of Adelaide Writers’ Week implosion describes her major literary award win as a victory over “Premiers who refer to me as ‘that woman’ and ‘that writer’”. Legendary performer Nick Cave weighs in.
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s 2025 novel Discipline won the People’s Choice award at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards – including $2000 prize money from Victoria’s Wheeler Centre –on Wednesday night. In her acceptance speech, the author referenced the cancelled Adelaide Writers’ Week and the influence of the SA Premier.
Abdel-Fattah said the award, determined by a public vote between December 10 and January 18, was a “powerful rejection by readers of the ongoing assault” on the arts.
“If my winning the People’s Choice Award means anything, it is not just that I, a Palestinian, wrote it in a time of my people’s genocide and that I am humbled by readers embracing this story,” she said.
“Nor is it just the sweet victory against certain Premiers who refer to me as ‘that woman’ and ‘that writer’ – although one hardly expects they have time to read when they’re too busy ruining festivals.”
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas has previously said while he gave the Adelaide Festival board his opinion that Abdel-Fattah should not attend Adelaide Writers’ Week, he did not direct them to cancel Abdel-Fattah and was not involved in the festival’s cancellation.
However, he later dug in with strong opposition to Abdel-Fattah’s views being heard in Adelaide.
Abdel-Fattah was programmed to discuss Discipline at Adelaide Writers Week, which was cancelled after she was removed from the program on January 8, sparking a writer boycott and board resignations. She later received an apology from the new board and an invitation to attend Adelaide Writers’ Week 2027, though the 2026 literary festival could not be salvaged.
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She is now appearing in Adelaide this Sunday and the 1100-seat venue sold out in three days, with hundreds on the waiting list, according to an alternative writer’s week event organiser.
Malinauskas’ comments related to Abdel-Fattah’s appearance at Writers’ Week led to Abdel-Fattah issuing two concerns notices for defamation against the Premier, saying she was left with “no choice”.
Malinauskas told InDaily in February that he stands by his comments and was “not fussed” about defamation proceedings clouding South Australia’s March election.
“I formed a view about what I thought was right for the state and civility and respect of one another, and I wouldn’t change that position, so I’m not really too fussed about that,” Malinauskas said.
The Premier’s office was contacted for comment.
It comes as high-profile Australian musician Nick Cave said he “laments the state of art” in response to a question about art and politics on his site The Red Hand Files this month.
“The furore around the Adelaide Writers’ Week was happening while I was on tour in Australia (in January),” Cave wrote.
“In an almost cosmic display of stupidity, that entire event was vaporised in a mushroom cloud of cowardice, performative outrage, self-righteous posturing, cancellations, counter-cancellations, mob trots and general narcissistic silliness.”
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“‘Political art’, taken to its extreme, became ‘no art’. No art at all, as Australia’s longest-running literary festival collapsed under a mass walkout.”
In her acceptance speech, Abdel-Fattah also referenced NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, who earlier this month questioned Abdel-Fattah’s inclusion in the Newcastle Writers’ Festival.
Abdel-Fattah also thanked her “visionary publisher”, Aviva Tuffield at the University of Queensland Press, who faced pressure to not publish Discipline, an issue Abdel-Fattah said was also being faced by other authors, including First Nations poet Jazz Money and SA-based Martu author K.A. Ren Wyld.
This weekend, Abdel-Fattah will appear at a special event at Town Hall in conversation with former Writers’ Week Director Louise Adler – who resigned from Writers’ Week, saying the literary festival’s controversy was the “canary in the coalmine” for free speech.
Stellar Prize-winning poet Evelyn Araluen – one of the authors that boycotted Adelaide Writers’ Week in support of Abdel-Fattah – took out the award night’s top gong, the Victorian Prize for Literature, for her novel The Rot.
In an emotional acceptance speech, Araluen also referenced Adelaide’s high-profile literary festival as critical to writing her book.
“The reason I wrote this book is because my best friend, Chloe Mills, was with me at the Adelaide Writers Festival in 2024 and I read the first poem that I wrote for this collection,” she said.
“I was heckled, which is fine and valid, and they were right to,” she said.
“I had Chloe being there and telling me that I needed to write again and that I should write another book, it just made me a better person and she constantly makes me a better person.”
Adelaide writer Margot McGovern’s YA horror novel This Stays Between Us won the John Marsden Prize for Writing for Young Adults, with a $25,000 cash prize.
Author Micaela Sahhar won the Non-Fiction award for her debut memoir, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: An Encyclopaedia of a Palestinian Family. Sahhar will also be attending Constellations, the alternative writers’ festival beginning this week.
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