
Organizers of Australia’s largest free literary festival canceled the event Tuesday after more than 180 writers and speakers withdrew over the scrapping of an appearance by an Australian-Palestinian writer and academic.
The uproar began when the board of the Adelaide Festival, which runs Adelaide Writers Week, announced on Jan. 8 that they had disinvited Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the event “given her previous statements” and citing cultural sensitivities “at this unprecedented time so soon after” an antisemitic mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.