Louise Adler was hoping for a civil conversation in a garden about books.
Instead, the director of Adelaide Writers’ Week is dealing with calls to resign amid allegations she has invited authors of hate speech – and writers and sponsors pulling out.
“I’m not running a political festival here, I’m running a literary festival,” she told AAP.
The controversy began with statements by two authors on Adler’s bill, Palestinian American Susan Abulhawa and Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd.
Among other comments, El-Kurd has compared the state of Israel to the Nazi regime, while Abulhawa has declared “DeNazify Ukraine” on Twitter, a line used to justify Putin’s invasion.
This prompted Ukrainian writers Olesya Khromeychuk and Kateryna Babkina to withdraw from the event, together with Ukrainian-Australian Maria Tumarkin, who argued the Palestinian writers’ commentary was a form of “genocide cheering”.
“They do not exist in the space of discourse only, and do not represent something that can be classified as merely a contentious political opinion,” Ms Tumarkin said in an online statement.
Adler is disappointed the writers have pulled out.
Sponsors walking away
“They’ve opted to step away, which is their prerogative, thank God we live in a democracy, you can choose not to come, you can choose not to engage,” she said.
She argues the Palestinian authors were invited for their books rather than their tweets and cautioned that with more than 150 other writers participating and 44,000 tickets sold, there is no sign of a mass exodus.
But sponsors are quitting too, with law firm Minter Ellison withdrawing after five years backing Writers’ Week.
“We do not agree with those views. We have strongly expressed our reservations to the festival,” the law firm said in a statement.
In a recent letter to The Australian, Black Inc publisher Morry Schwartz said Adler had invited authors of hate speech, an allegation she rejects, and has called on her to resign.
“I won’t dignify that with a response,” Adler said.
“You have to think what is behind the outrage? Why do we not have space for people who have dissenting views to actually articulate them?”
Tumarkin has declined to be interviewed, but she believes Australian literary festivals are simply not robust enough to handle writers with irreconcilable views about genocide or ongoing wars.
“Tolerance, difference of opinion, dialogue, openness, civic discourse … they’re useless in the face of dehumanisation and violence,” Tumarkin said.
Ironically, the festival’s theme for 2023 was “Truth be Told” – a look at relativism, truth in fiction and the importance of truth in an age of misinformation.
It gets better: “The world has finally reopened, and we are discovering our social selves, our pleasure in gathering together,” Adler enthuses in her program introduction.
Writers’ Week isn’t the only festival to face controversy and cancellations, with several artists pulling out of Bluesfest after controversial Sydney band Sticky Fingers was added to the line-up.
Author Dennis Glover, a guest of Writer’s Week in 2021 whose books are published by Schwartz’s Black Inc, believes writers should insist on reasoned public debate and refuse to play along with crackdowns on speech.
‘Believe in freedom of speech’
“If you’re a progressive, you have to believe in two things. You have to believe in democracy and you have to believe in freedom of speech and you can’t really make exceptions,” he said.
“All we manage to do by calling for people not to be heard is undermine our own respect for freedom of speech and democracy and we train people to think that’s okay, when it’s not.”
Glover said that ultimately, what happens in Adelaide would have very little effect on conflicts in the rest of the world, and on this point at least, Tumarkin agrees.
“Literary festivals are just, you know, festivals. They are not hallowed spaces, they are not public squares. The blood of the nation doesn’t travel through them to the nation’s brain all that often,” she said.
With all the controversy, it’s a wonder anyone has time for books. At any rate, a garden in Adelaide sounds like a nice place to read one.
Adelaide Writers’ Week goes from March 4 to March 9 at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Gardens.
-AAP
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