What is the next chapter for Australia’s embattled writers festivals? |
The cancellation of Adelaide Writers’ Week has exposed how culture wars, funding pressures and climate risk are reshaping Australia’s literary festivals – and putting their future in doubt.
For more than 65 years, book lovers have descended on Adelaide every summer for Australia’s longest running literary festival. That is, until this year, when around 180 invited authors (including me) boycotted Adelaide Writers Week, following the board’s decision to “uninvite” Palestinian-Australian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. The festival was cancelled.
But Abdel-Fattah will appear in Adelaide this March, after all. She’ll be in conversation with former Writers’ Week director Louise Adler (who resigned over the fiasco) as part of a ‘guerilla’ writers festival. It will occupy the space vacated by Writers Week’s cancellation.
The community organised festival, Constellations: Not Writers Week, will include a program of ‘Blak & Arab writers in conversation’, a day of children’s programming, a mini poetry festival (including JM Coetzee) and more. But as its name suggests, the much smaller festival is not actually Writers’ Week.
This series of events follows the cancellation of one Australian writers festival and early closure of another last year.
In 2026, Australian literary festivals are under threat from the culture wars, climate risks, new hate speech laws and ongoing funding scarcity. The announcement of some Writing Australia programs, including a Writers’ Festival Author Travel Fund, are a modest move in the right direction. These festivals are crucial to our literary ecosystem. What does their future look like?
Adelaide Writers’ Week, which began in 1960, traditionally kicks off Australia’s literary festival year each summer, in late February and early March. Because it is largely free, there are more attendees than at other festivals – and they buy more books. Crowds are enormous: 160,000 last year.
Sydney........