The Adelaide Writers’ Week director, Louise Adler, has vowed not to be dissuaded from creating space for “courageous” discussions of literature and opposing views, despite high-profile withdrawals and calls for her resignation.
Three Ukrainian writers and a major financial sponsor have withdrawn from next month’s Adelaide festival event in response to social media comments by two writers appearing at the event, Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd.
Abulhawa is a Palestinian-American writer whose book Mornings in Jenin tells the story of a Palestinian family forcibly removed from their village by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948. Recently she has accused the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, of dragging the world into conflict, describing him as a Nazi-promoting Zionist. On Thursday, Abulhawa described Israel as a Nazi state.
El-Kurd is a Palestinian poet whose debut collection of poetry, Rifqa, narrates his experience of dispossession in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. The Anti-Defamation League has criticised some of his social media comments as antisemitic, including references to Zionists lusting for Palestinian blood, and comparisons of Israelis to Nazis.
These comments have led two Ukrainian writers, Kateryna Babkina and Olesya Khromeychuk, and Maria Tumarkin, who describes herself as a Ukrainian Jewish Australian, to withdraw from a festival session on the impact of Russia’s invasion on Ukraine’s civilians.
In a statement on her website, Tumarkin said describing Zelenskiy as a Nazi, or someone responsible for dragging the world into warfare, “cannot be classified as merely a contentious opinion”.
“Festivals’ insistence that it is possible and advisable to inhabit a realm of ideas when the living struggle to keep up with burying their dead make things worse,” Tumarkin said.
Tumarkin did not urge other people to boycott the festival or call for cancellations and resignations.
She also shared part of Babkina’s letter to Adler, which announced her withdrawal.
“I’m afraid I can’t participate in any kind of event that gives voice to the person considering Ukrainians should give up their right to decide what to do with their destiny and their independent country and just become a ‘neutral nation’ pleasing Russian ambitions in order not to be killed,” Babkina wrote, according to Tumarkin.
Khromeychuk told Adler she was “saddened that calls to be sensitive in relation to Ukrainians who have been attacked in this genocidal war and to not give a platform to voices that repeat Kremlin propaganda are not always heard”.
Adler said the withdrawals were “unfortunate” and “sad”, given she wanted the festival to boost awareness of Ukrainian literary culture. She stressed that all authors were invited based on their published works, rather than their social media comments, which would not be discussed.
“I’m sorry, I’m really disappointed because if one writer is enough for other writers to say ‘I won’t take part’ then that debases the importance of the public sphere and the conversations that are possible,” Adler said.
“If people want to filter what they think about and what they’re interested in and who they are prepared to read from the social media world, good luck to them. That is not how I would suggest we should determine how we read and what we think.”
Adler has faced a wave of criticism this week with one long-term sponsor, MinterEllison, withdrawing support for the festival. A statement released by the law firm said “no racist or antisemitic commentary should be tolerated”.
Adler said the festival was not a political debating society and would focus on the writers’ published work and their experiences as authors or poets.
“Our terrain is to say, ‘what does it mean to write poetry in a period where we are talking and thinking about land, dispossession, homelessness, homes and exile’,” Adler said.
Morry Schwartz, the owner of Black Inc and Schwartz media, which publish the Saturday paper and the Monthly, has called for Adler to resign. He told the Australian she had invited “authors of hate speech” to the festival. He did not call for 15 authors represented by his companies to decline invitations.
“My reaction, and I hope you will print it in full, is that I will not dignify that with a response,” said Adler, a daughter of Holocaust survivors.
Adler said she was not interested in providing a safe space for readers to agree with each other without exposure to opposing ideas and instead wanted civil, respectful and open dialogue.
“I am interested in creating a context for courageous and brave spaces where we can have civil dialogue and discussion about ideas that we may not all agree on,” Adler said.
“If we all gather together just to agree with one another or with people who share our views, well some people might enjoy that, but I don’t think that’s the point of a literary festival.”
