Randa Abdel-Fattah to appear at Adelaide Writers' Week

Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah has accepted an invitation to appear at next year's Adelaide Writers' Week, the Adelaide Festival has confirmed, as it unveils its program for next year.

The 2027 festival will include West End play Oedipus starring Richard Roxburgh and Heather Mitchell, Bela Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle, TAO Dance Theater from Beijing and a "provocative, daring theatre work" from Brazil entitled The Brotherhood.

Highlights from the line-up for Adelaide Writers' Week — which is part of the greater Adelaide Festival program — have been unveiled today.

In January, the Adelaide Festival board decided to remove Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 Adelaide Writers' Week program, citing her "past statements", but did not specify which ones.

"Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah's or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi," the board's statement read.

At the time, Abdel-Fattah has said it was "outrageous" to be linked to the incident at Bondi in December last year.

Abdel-Fattah was later the subject of an apology from the Festival Corporation, which invited her back for 2027.

Abdel-Fattah appeared at an alternative literary festival, Constellations, which was organised in the wake of the cancellation of Adelaide Writers' Week.

It was reported in April, by the Australian Financial Review, that Abdel-Fattah had accepted that invitation — an outcome confirmed by Mr Lutton.

"The board offered an invitation to her earlier in the year and she's accepted,"

Mr Lutton said.

"That was a decision that the board made and I support their decision."

Mr Lutton said Writers' Week's new director Rosemarie Milsom — the successor to Louise Adler, who resigned as director in January in solidarity with Abdel-Fattah — would be unveiling highlights on Tuesday.

"Then the full Adelaide Writers' Week program will be announced in January," he said.

Mr Lutton said affordability had been a consideration for the broader festival, which would be making some $40 tickets available across the program to people under the age of 40.

"There's free events across the festival. We have an expanded visual arts program across seven different galleries where six of them are free exhibitions," he said.

He said performing artists were keen to join the line-up of the festival, which will run from February 25 to March 14.

"I think they see it as a place where they know national audiences from around Australia will be gathering and they know that there's a really daring and engaged audience at Adelaide Festival," Mr Lutton said.