{"id":346967,"date":"2026-01-11T14:55:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T04:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=346967"},"modified":"2026-01-11T15:25:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:25:28","slug":"adelaide-writers-week-faces-collapse-after-author-withdrawals-over-dropped-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=346967","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide Writers&#8217; Week Faces Collapse After Author Withdrawals Over Dropped Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?tag=adelaide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Adelaide\">Adelaide<\/a> Festival Board dropped Palestinian-Australian writer Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah from the late February event, pointing to &#8216;cultural sensitivity&#8217; following the December 14, 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?tag=bondi-beach-massacre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Bondi Beach Massacre\">Bondi Beach shooting<\/a> where 15 people died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?tag=abdel-fattah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Abdel-Fattah\">Abdel-Fattah<\/a>, author of 12 books including *Discipline*, called it anti-Palestinian racism and censorship, while critics like Yanis Varoufakis and Jane Caro decried it as a free speech betrayal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By January 9, almost 100 authors withdrew, organisations pulled support, and the full lineup was unpublished, leaving the beloved free literary event&#8217;s future in doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By January 9, almost 100 authors have withdrawn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":347033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,35],"tags":[19194,265,19195],"class_list":["post-346967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","tag-abdel-fattah","tag-adelaide","tag-adelaide-writers-festival"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346973,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346967\/revisions\/346973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/347033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}