Prominent publisher Morry Schwartz, the owner of Black Inc and Schwartz Media which publishes The Saturday Paper and The Monthly, has called on Louise Adler to resign as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week, claiming she invited “authors of hate speech” to the festival.
Schwartz’s comments come after major law firm MinterEllison withdrew its sponsorship of the festival, at which 15 Black Inc authors will be appearing, because of public statements made by two authors Adler has programmed at Writers’ Week, Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd. International technology company Capgemini has also withdrawn its backing.
In a letter this week to The Australian, Schwartz said antisemitism was “again showing its ugly historical face. It is again being normalised and made acceptable”, regarding comments made by Abulhawa and El-Kurd.
“I call on Louise Adler, who invited the authors of these atrocities to Adelaide Writers’ Week, to disinvite them. And I call on her to resign,” Schwartz said.
Adler, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, said she would not “dignify Morry Schwartz’s opinion with a response”.
On Tuesday, before Schwartz’s call, Adler said she had found the “antagonism towards individual writers [to be] disturbing and immoderate”.
She also said that both Abulhawa and El-Kurd have been asked to participate in the program because of their published work – which continues pertinent discussions about “land, homelands, dispossession and exile” – not what they write on social media.
Read the article by Jason Steger in WAToday.