Some of Australia’s highest profile writers, including a dual Miles Franklin winner, have announced they will no longer work with the library.
The controversy over the State Library’s decision to cancel workshops run by authors who expressed pro-Palestinian views has escalated with some of the nation’s most respected authors launching a boycott of the 170-year-old institution.
Birch, who is also a professor of Australian literature at Melbourne University, has declined any further work with the library, de Kretser has declined a significant writing commission from the library, and Yee has refused a prestigious writer-in-residence position over the issue. Two staff members who were in the room in one, and another staff member who heard it from people who had just left the meeting, said that when challenged about his looking at Sakr’s public commentary, Duldig allegedly responded: “You call it profiling, I call it risk management.”, more than 100 staff at the State Library subsequently wrote to its chief executive expressing anger at the postponement of the workshops.
State Library Victoria is undertaking a review and says the bootcamps will be rescheduled later this year., said that in a democracy, libraries are repositories for diverse voices and stories. “As such, diversity, inclusion and equity are the public library’s raison d’etre,” she said. “Censorship of voices and opinions is not compatible with that.”
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