The cancellation of Adelaide Writers’ Week has exposed how culture wars, funding pressures and climate risk are reshaping Australia’s literary festivals – and putting their future in doubt.

For more than 65 years, book lovers have descended on Adelaide every summer for Australia’s longest running literary festival. That is, until this year, when around 180 invited authors (including me) boycotted Adelaide Writers Week, following the board’s decision to “uninvite” Palestinian-Australian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. The festival  was cancelled.

But Abdel-Fattah  will appear in Adelaide this March, after all. She’ll be in conversation with former Writers’ Week director Louise Adler (who resigned over the fiasco) as part of a ‘guerilla’ writers festival. It will occupy the space vacated by Writers Week’s cancellation.

The community organised festival,  Constellations: Not Writers Week, will include a program of ‘Blak & Arab writers in conversation’, a day of children’s programming, a mini poetry festival (including JM Coetzee) and more. But as its name suggests, the much smaller festival is not actually Writers’ Week.

This series of events follows the cancellation of one Australian writers festival and early closure of another last year.

In 2026, Australian literary festivals are under threat from the culture wars, climate risks, new hate speech laws and ongoing funding scarcity. The announcement of some Writing Australia programs, including a  Writers’ Festival Author Travel Fund, are a modest move in the right direction. These festivals are crucial to our literary ecosystem. What does their future look like?

Adelaide Writers’ Week,  which began in 1960, traditionally kicks off Australia’s literary festival year each summer, in late February and early March. Because it is largely free, there are more attendees than at other festivals – and they  buy more books. Crowds are enormous:  160,000 last year.

Sydney Writers’ Festival and Melbourne Writers Festival are both held in May and regularly top 100,000 attendees.  Canberra Writers Festival, which often includes a focus on politics, will celebrate its tenth anniversary this October.  Brisbane Writers Festival will turn 62 this year, also in October.

The  NT Writers Festival, which includes a strong focus on First Nations writers, alternates between tropical Darwin (this year) and desert Alice Springs, in May. It’s an opportunity to bring writers to audiences who often miss out on the author tours that tend to hug the east coast.

So is Western Australia’s literary festival. Perth  Writers Weekend has traditionally run within the state’s festival program each summer (like Adelaide Writers Week) – but this year, Perth Festival will run a standalone writers festival in “spring”.

Byron Writers Festival, Australia’s biggest regional writers festival, is held in August. It regularly attracts big-name international guests, as well as local favourites. In the two years I’ve had the pleasure of going, a  mini hurricane shredded tents (in 2016) and  flooding cut the festival short (last year). Festival director Jessica Alice says they are “reimagining” the venue and format “for 2026 and beyond”.

Festivals have sprung up in smaller towns around Australia, too – like  Mudgee (August) in New South Wales, and  Mildura (July) in Victoria. Suburbs, often wealthy ones, also hold them, like Sydney’s  Manly (March) – whose program includes a session on Jewish women’s voices after October 7, as well as pro-Palestinian writers like Omar Sakr – and Melbourne’s  Williamstown (June).

Although cancellations are a recent phenomenon, controversies at literary festivals are not new. At the  Sydney Writers’ Festival in 2017, then ABC radio host Paul Cathcart sparked outrage after repeatedly used the “n” word when interviewing African American author Paul Beatty. At  Brisbane Writers Festival the year before, Yassmin Abdel-Magied walked out of Lionel Shriver’s keynote address, which seemed to condone cultural appropriation in literature.

In 2015, Melbourne Writers Festival  guest Mark Latham called his onstage interviewer an “ABC wanker” and invited the audience to “f*** off”. A year later,  the festival was heavily criticised for programming a panel on the “sex trade” without platforming sex workers.

In 2025, Bendigo Writers Festival marked the first time an Australian writers festival was cancelled due to an author walkout. The festival sent a “ code of conduct” to authors just two days before opening, including a requirement to abide by the controversial Universities Australia  definition of antisemitism. This triggered a mass boycott from authors – and ultimately, the festival’s cancellation.

Given this recent history, it was predictable that the withdrawal of Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to Adelaide Writers’ Week, following South Australian Premier  Peter Malinauskas expressing concerns to the board, would result in the festival’s cancellation. But perhaps not the extent of the full effect: the Adelaide Festival board resigned en masse, was  quickly replaced – and the new board apologised to Abdel-Fattah, reissuing her invitation for 2027.

Last week, Writing Australia announced its first funding and standalone programs – including a  Writers’ Festival Author Travel Fund, which supports writers to connect with audiences through festivals and touring in regional areas and capital cities.

Other funding includes a A$2 million  Australian Publishing and Promotion Fund for independent publishers and a  Literary Journals Capacity Building Fund, which will help journals achieve greater stability, longevity and build audiences.

Festivals are important for (typically  poorly paid) authors: perks include royalties from book sales, an appearance fee and a night or two in a nice hotel. They’re also important to publishers and readers. But their future is by no means guaranteed.

Relatively modest  author appearance fees don’t have much effect on the enormous cost: in practice, authors are usually paid around $250 per event. (Including session chairs, who often read multiple books and spend hours on preparation.) And most festivals also have smiling  armies of  volunteers.

But festival budgets groan under the weight of insurance, venue hire, travel and accommodation, audiovisual and other costs.

As last year’s Byron Writers Festival shows, any festival with outside events needs to contend with  increasingly extreme weather: whether bushfires, heatwaves or floods. Even in a city such as Sydney, increases in  flash flooding in recent years make travelling across town tricky.

The uncertainty is further exacerbated by the culture wars. New  hate speech laws passed at the start of 2026 have the potential to make festival directors – and their boards – more risk averse. This is not to say authors regularly participate in hate speech, but fears of litigation and cancellation linked to those laws are bound to affect festival directors’ programming decisions.

Culture wars don’t just affect the choices of artists to accept invitations. Donors can wield a lot of power by threatening to withdraw their support if programming doesn’t match their preferences. In 2023,  Minter Ellison withdrew support for Adelaide Writers’ Week over the programming of Palestinian authors.

What might help writers festivals, in these difficult times?

While the sector has welcomed additional funding, it is paltry compared with the arts funding in other developed countries, such as  Canada. To ensure a robust, long-lasting and more equitable literary sector, the only solution is a big increase in government funding – so long as it is independent of political interference – and sustained grants that can facilitate planning and growth.

Republished from The Conversation on 5 February 2026