‘Constellation’, the writer’s week that rose from the ashes of the cancelled Adelaide Festival, got off to a flyer last weekend, making a mockery of Premier Malinauskas’ and the Zionist lobby’s efforts to kill it. Kim Wingerei was there.
Sunday evening, the magnificent Town Hall auditorium was packed to the rafters as more than a thousand people attended the on-stage interview of uninvited author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah by former Writers’ Week director Louise Adler. Organisers said they could have accommodated at least another thousand.
Louis Adler didn’t mince her words: “The Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) debacle might have served as a ‘life lesson’ to politicians and lobbyists about the risks involved in interfering with the independence of arts organisations.”
But as we have seen at Newcastle and the Sydney Writers Festival some are apparently slow learners.
Earlier, a session headlined by the doyen of environmental activism, Bob Brown, and Economist and author Yanis Varoufakis, was also sold out, as are many other events this week.
On Monday, yours truly moderated a session on Press Freedom under threat with former journalists with decades of experience in conflict zones, now authors, Peter Greste and Michael Delahaye, in front of 800 people.
Peter Malinauskas was invited, but the only reply we got from his office was an email saying our email was important…
Constellations to rise as Adelaide writers get another chance
