The opposition has called on the premier to intervene in the state government-funded Writers Week event after controversy erupted over two scheduled guests.
The call comes after Adelaide Festival said it would not remove two controversial authors from its Writers Week program, despite outrage from Jewish and Ukrainian community groups.
Writers Week director Louise Adler defended its decision to include Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, whose tweets have been called anti-Semitic, and Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, who has openly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We cannot accede to the idea that we should disinvite people or cancel writers because someone or some group might object to their views,” Ms Adler said on Thursday.
“I don’t want us to be party to cancel culture.”
Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa, who will take part in two sessions in Writers Week, has been an outspoken critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and defended Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday, Abulhawa tweeted her response to those who had called for her attendance at Writers Week to be cancelled.
“You know you’re headed to a great festival when the director isn’t afraid to stand up to bullies,” she wrote.
Abulhawa has previously called Zelensky a “depraved Zionist with a house on stolen Palestinian land”.
Read the article by Patrick McDonald in The Advertiser.