Resignations follow withdrawal of more than 70 participants in writers’ week after Palestinian Australian author disinvited

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The Adelaide festival is facing an unprecedented leadership crisis after three board members resigned this weekend.

The journalist Daniela Ritorto, the Adelaide businesswoman Donny Walford and the lawyer Nick Linke stepped down at an extraordinary board meeting on Saturday following the board’s controversial decision to dump the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 writers’ week program.

Palestinian academic rejects accusations of hypocrisy, saying board resisted attempts to remove Thomas Friedman, while cancelling her invitation this year

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The Adelaide festival board did not dump a Jewish columnist from its 2024 lineup at Adelaide writers’ week, despite being lobbied by a group of 10 academics – including Randa Abdel-Fattah – to do so.

On Saturday South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, claimed that the board had dumped the New York Times pro-Israel columnist Thomas Friedman in 2024, and reiterated his support for the festival board’s decision on Thursday to remove Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian Australian academic, from this year’s program.

Helen Garner and Miles Franklin winner Michelle de Kretser among 47 people who have pulled out of annual writers’ festival to protest Abdel-Fattah’s axing

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The Adelaide festival has pulled down part of its website as dozens of speakers said they were boycotting writers’ week, after Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah was dumped from the lineup with the board citing “cultural sensitivity” concerns in the wake of the Bondi terror attack.

The page promoting the schedule of authors, journalists, academics and commentators was “unpublished” on Friday following widespread condemnation of the board’s decision to remove Abdel-Fattah.