Adelaide writers’ week sacrificed to save city’s prestigious arts festival, documents show

Briefings obtained by freedom of information warned a ‘cascade of withdrawals’ could lead to collapse of 2026 South Australian festival

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Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show.

After the 8 January announcement by the Adelaide festival board that controversial Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah had been dumped from the AWW program, it wasn’t just fellow Australian and international guest writers and academics who began pulling out in droves.