The deliberations of ABC Friends SA/NT regarding our involvement with a famed Adelaide literary festival.

Going back to late 2025, it’s safe to say that enthusiasm was running high within the executive of ABC Friends SA/NT for us to once again be part of SA’s nationally-recognised leading literary event, Adelaide Writer’s Week (AWW). In years past, this gathering of eminent national and international journalists, authors and writers to provide a free, week-long public literary festival has been a major boon for our SA-NT branch. Having our members (in our T-shirts, with fliers and bookmarks in hand) as a visible presence at the event in both 2024 and 2025, we were looking forward to the opportunity once again to raise public awareness of the existence of ABC Friends. As some other smaller states will know, we long for such publicity to fortify our numbers in the SA/NT branch.

Then, in January the blow-by-blow news rolled in, making international headlines as the Adelaide Writers Week (auspiced as part of the Adelaide Arts Festival) disinvited a Palestinian Australian author. Political involvement was later revealed to be part of that board decision, a decision which quickly led to 180 authors pulling out of the festival in protest and most of the board resigning, with the festival then cancelled. The Adelaide Festival also had performers questioning their participation, the most notable being the musical band Pulp. The new board apologised to Randa Abdel-Fattah and invited her to speak at Adelaide Writer’s Week in 2027, a move that may have been the saving grace for the future next year and beyond for Adelaide Writers Week.

But the damage was done – Within our branch email threads, there was a tone of shock and disappointment at this series of events. We shared deep consideration of how to navigate the situation for ABC Friends involvement, particularly as an alternative festival emerged, titled ‘Constellations’ and also known as ‘Not Writer’s Week’. This festival was also located at several premier venues in Adelaide such as the city’s university and a prominent council library venue. Constellations was headlined by Louise Adler, now former AWW director, and Randa Abdel-Fattah. Local writers’ groups and the long-established Writers SA also led the development and running of the festival, a truly local, community affair offering an opportunity to authors who had boycotted AWW. 

So, the question continued….Will we or won’t we? While ABC Friends were deliberating and exploring options for this opportunity and considering the political climate, our involvement was further narrowed by external factors. The Constellation festival organisers were unable to accommodate one of our previous AWW arrangements that had been so successful – to provide flyers and bookmarks to festival attendees.  In a move to recognise that our members may hold diverse views on the alternative festival, the branch executive made the decision for involvement to be in the hands of individual members.  Some members took up this opportunity to be a low-key presence at several Constellations events.  More broadly, we also noted this as an opportunity to put our energies into learning about and engaging with local writing/literary groups, certainly a helpful long-term outcome. The fruits of this can be seen in our social media posts featuring ABC Friends members attending local literary events this year, which is a new foray for us.

We welcome any further ideas from members about how to reach the community with our message of fighting for a strong, well-funded ABC. You can contact us at sa@abcfriends.net.au