An impromptu event called Constellations: Not Writers’ Week is stepping into the void left by Adelaide Writers’ Week, putting its controversial cancellation in January back into the spotlight.
As The Sydney Morning Herald reports, Randa Abdel-Fattah – whose expected presence was cancelled after the Bondi shootings in December 2025 – and former director of AWW Louise Adler, will feature at the ‘rebel’ event.
Constellations will take place over the same early-March period that Adelaide Writers’ Week, part of the broader Adelaide Festival, was to have been held.
Dr Louise Adler. Image: Instagram.
New Adelaide writers event Constellations
The festival board’s retraction of its invitation to Abdel-Fattah triggered a large-scale author boycott of the event, necessitating its cancellation, and a new board was introduced.
The SMH reports that Constellations has been granted some venue hire by Adelaide Council, but otherwise has no funding from the South Australian government. Premier Peter Malinauskus was involved in the decision to remove Abdel-Fattah from the event’s guest list in January, saying that her presence was inappropriate in light of the Bondi Hanukkah attack.
In the new event, Adler will host a conversation with Abdel-Fattah, which has been funded by booksellers, publishers, authors and taxpayer-funded peak body Writers SA.
Authors originally invited to AWW, including former Greens leader Bob Brown and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, will also attend.
Abdel-Fattah has not spoken publicly yet about Constellations, but did announce on her social media this week that she is taking a “short break” to concentrate in part on her academic work and a defamation claim she has launched against Malinauskas.
Randa Abdel-Fattah. Image: Instagram
Constellations will be a community-led event
Writers SA head Jennifer Mills said Constellations was a “decentralised, community-led” event that was not intended to replace Adelaide Writers’ Week.
“I think it’s very important for artists to speak up in defence of freedom of expression, as we have here,” Mills told The SMH.
“So we are looking at prioritising Palestinian voices, First Nations voices, and celebrating some of the writers who pulled out of the AWW program. It’s very important to us that we didn’t just leave a void of silence in the city that week.”