{"id":645834,"date":"2026-05-02T23:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/645834\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T23:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:35:12","slug":"shaken-staff-and-an-author-exodus-how-a-picture-book-plunged-an-acclaimed-australian-publisher-into-a-crisis-over-antisemitism-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/645834\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaken staff and an author exodus: how a picture book plunged an acclaimed Australian publisher into a crisis over antisemitism | Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 28 February, University of Queensland<\/a> Press received an email from one of its authors warning of the publisher\u2019s impending collapse.<\/p>\n

UQP is one of the most celebrated literary houses in the country \u2013 the Australian Book Industry Awards\u2019 small publisher of the year for four of the past five years \u2013 and its enviable stable of authors continues to win major awards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But poet Omar Sakr<\/a>\u2019s message to UQP\u2019s director, Madonna Duffy, spoke to the turmoil roiling behind the publisher\u2019s sandstone facade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen in recent times entire festivals collapse<\/a> when authors walked out en masse,\u201d Sakr wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assure you the same thing is possible for a publisher, and it would be heartbreaking if it were to happen to UQP, one of the very few decent publishing houses in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that warning has proved prescient as at least 17 authors have ended their contracts with UQP or vowed not to work with the publisher again, after a series of events stemming from responses to the Israel-Gaza war<\/a> culminated in last week\u2019s cancellation of a children\u2019s book by the Indigenous poet Jazz Money over comments by the book\u2019s illustrator, Matt Chun, about the Bondi terror attack.<\/p>\n

How did it come to this?<\/p>\n

Sakr\u2019s discontent with UQP goes back at least to January 2025, when he was one of 55 UQP authors to sign an open letter in solidarity with Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah<\/a> who, according to the letter, was subject to a campaign by the \u201cZionist lobby and its allies\u201d to prevent UQP from publishing her novel Discipline.<\/p>\n

The University of Queensland vice-chancellor, Prof Deborah Terry, was quoted in the Courier Mail as committing to a \u201creview\u201d of Abdel-Fattah\u2019s book deal, something Sakr and his fellow signatories described as \u201cincredibly disheartening and concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n

The review found nothing to prevent Discipline\u2019s publication but led to another review into UQP governance.<\/p>\n

Poet Omar Sakr said the cancellation of Bila had tarnished \u2018a once-great publishing house with an act that goes against its very traditions\u2019. Photograph: Isabella Moore<\/p>\n

In February 2025, the publisher paused printing on Sakr\u2019s own book, weeks out from its eventual release, to have it reviewed by an \u201cacademic expert in hate speech\u201d.<\/p>\n

A collaboration with the visual artist Safdar Ahmed, The Nightmare Sequence is described as a collection of poems and artworks bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza. The review found no issue with the poems but raised concerns about a reference to Israel as a \u201cZionist entity\u201d in the introduction, written by Palestinian-American poet George Abraham, and an illustration that showed the former US president Joe Biden as a monster with an appendage that could be construed as a tentacle.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

The book went ahead with no changes other than a brief explanatory footnote in the introduction but Sakr said the review left him feeling \u201cinsulted, offended and humiliated\u201d.<\/p>\n

After these two \u201chate speech\u201d reviews, another of the country\u2019s most esteemed writers, Tony Birch<\/a>, became involved and wrote to the publisher making what he described as the \u201creasonable request that in future writers\u2019 contracts stipulate that we should be informed and consulted before a manuscript can be sent to a party outside the Press\u201d.<\/p>\n

After his request was refused, Birch says, his longstanding and award-winning relationship with UQP became \u201cuntenable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Authors cut ties<\/p>\n

The event that sparked the mass exodus of authors in the past weeks was UQP\u2019s decision first to put on hold the publication of Money\u2019s book<\/a>, and then last week to cancel it altogether<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Five-thousand copies of Bila, A River Cycle, a lyrical tale about a river on Money\u2019s ancestral Wiradjuri country with a message of environmental stewardship, now sit in storage while the university considers \u2013 in the words of its communications department \u2013 \u201crecycling options\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jazz Money\u2019s children\u2019s book Bila, A River Cycle was cancelled before publication. Photograph: Jeremy Weihrauch\/Supplied<\/p>\n

It came under scrutiny after Chun published a Substack post<\/a> on 1 January about the Bondi beach attack, condemning \u201cliberal capitulation\u201d to the \u201cZionist framing\u201d that \u201cviolence that impacts the affluent beneficiaries and perpetrators of imperialism is deserving of special attention, elaborate memorials, rolling media coverage, and international headlines\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhiteness, Jewishness, and the backdrop of Bondi Beach were enough to bestow every person killed with default innocence and virtue,\u201d Chun wrote. \u201cWhite, Jewish settler victimhood demands exceptional, heightened grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fifteen people were killed in the terrorist attack on 14 December, including a 10-year-old child.<\/p>\n

Chun told the Guardian last week he stood by \u201cevery word\u201d of the article, which the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies said contained the type of sentiments that \u201cenabled hate and falsehoods to fester\u201d and created a \u201cputrid environment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Birch describes Chun\u2019s article as \u201ccomplex\u201d, saying it had \u201cmerit\u201d, but acknowledges the quotes \u201clifted\u201d by media could \u201cbe read as deeply offensive\u201d.<\/p>\n

In another email exchange ending his relationship with UQP, Sakr told Duffy and the executive dean of humanities at UQ, Heather Zwicker, that the cancellation of Bila had tarnished \u201ca once-great publishing house with an act that goes against its very traditions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo amount of HR-speak is going to salvage this disgrace,\u201d he wrote on Tuesday. \u201cLong may it haunt you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sakr was not alone. One of UQP\u2019s most successful and longstanding novelists, Melissa Lucashenko<\/a>, responded to Bila\u2019s cancellation prosaically, by vowing to seek to cut ties with UQP, and poetically, by casting an \u201cancestral curse on the lot of them\u201d. Another of its most awarded young poets, Evelyn Araluen<\/a>, said she was paying to rescind her UQP contract \u2013 and encouraging others to join her.<\/p>\n

Birch says \u201cthe destruction\u201d of Bila was \u201can act of cultural vandalism\u201d. Birch, like Lucashenko, Araluen and Money, was part of the publisher\u2019s proud and decades-long history of championing First Nations voices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the damage will be generational,\u201d Birch says.<\/p>\n

\u2018Collateral damage\u2019 concerns<\/p>\n

The La Trobe University professor Dennis Altman says he was shocked when he read Chun\u2019s online essay, originally titled \u201cWe don\u2019t mourn fascists\u201d.<\/p>\n

Altman, a seminal gay rights activist and author, is the son of Jewish refugees.<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from the fact that it is extraordinary to write something like that straight after a mass shooting, I certainly read it as clearly antisemitic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Yet Altman\u2019s first reaction to Bila\u2019s cancellation was \u201cto feel enormous sympathy to its author\u201d, to whom \u201ca huge disservice\u201d was done.<\/p>\n

He says the issue raises an interesting philosophical question: \u201cdo you ban someone for unacceptable views, even when those views are not relevant to the work?\u201d<\/p>\n

Should we read Harry Potter, Altman asks, if we consider JK Rowling \u201ca transphobe\u201d<\/a>? Or Lionel Shriver, if we accept accusations against her of cultural appropriation<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\u201cAgatha Christie was appallingly antisemitic and snobbish \u2013 does that mean we don\u2019t read her?\u201d he asks. \u201cOnce we start cancelling works of art \u2013 and I hate the cliche \u2013 but it becomes a slippery slope.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a point Sakr expanded on when he cut ties with UQP: should he \u201cmorally vet\u201d his copyeditor? What about his cover designer?<\/p>\n

Altman says the Bila decision comes at a time when universities are risk-averse and \u201cterrified of falling afoul of the antisemitism envoy<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Author Tony Birch says UQP had been a \u2018great supporter of Aboriginal writers\u2019. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see universities fearful of public debate,\u201d Altman says. \u201cBut do they not think through the reputational damage that they do in their concern to avoid controversy? They actually generate greater controversy and do great harm to their reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altman is also critical of creative boycotts. Though he is more circumspect about the UQP case, he fears for emerging writers and poets who may struggle to find an alternative publisher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do get really concerned about the collateral damage\u201d.<\/p>\n

Staff \u2018heartbroken\u2019<\/p>\n

Among the collateral were UQP staff. Last Friday, nine members of the small team put their name to an open letter in which they said they felt \u201cdistressed and betrayed\u201d by the decision to cancel Bila.<\/p>\n

Greatly \u201cconcerned about the precedent\u201d it set, they called on the university to overturn its decision.<\/p>\n

Several staff members spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe staff here are heartbroken,\u201d one said. \u201cThis is a really sad period of time in publishing history, a really dark time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The staff member said they wished UQP could have put out a statement saying the press did not condone what \u201cChun wrote in that piece and that we will not work with him again in light of that\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we should have said we stood by Jazz Money and proudly published Bila,\u201d they said. \u201cAnd that we don\u2019t pulp books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several staff spoke of a gradual sense that their editorial independence was being eroded over the past year.<\/p>\n

Money\u2019s former publicist Chloe Mills says she was censured for liking a social media photo of UQP writers at a festival wearing Readers and Writers Against Genocide shirts, and quit in August.<\/p>\n

Watching Bila\u2019s cancellation from afar, she says, was \u201cincredibly heartbreaking\u201d. For her former colleagues; for Money, whom she describes as \u201cvery kind, sweet and universally adored\u201d; and for the legacy of UQP.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t many places you can publish poetry in Australia, Mills says, before rattling off a list of UQP\u2019s \u201ccrazy amazing backlist\u201d: Lisa Bellear, Samuel Wagan Watson, Araluen, Sarah Holland-Batt, John Kinsella.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the alternative for those people?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing it all unravel like this \u2026 it\u2019s really sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birch says UQP had been a \u201cgreat supporter of Aboriginal writers\u201d but that \u201cany writer working with a publisher attached to a university would be anxious about the independence of their work\u201d.<\/p>\n

Birch says \u201call writers must take responsibility for their words\u201d but believes debates around \u201cwhatever offence any writer causes\u201d have \u201cno perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost 7 October [2023] we have dealt with the appalling hypocrisy of some publishers, bureaucrats, creative board members, media and politicians,\u201d Birch says. \u201cAustralia has failed to adequately support the people of Gaza, who have witnessed the destruction of their country and the murder of tens of thousands of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis failure will be remembered as a shameful history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duffy and Zwicker did not respond to a request for an interview.<\/p>\n

A UQ spokesperson said the university remained \u201cfirmly committed to UQP\u2019s editorial independence and values the critical role it plays in publishing diverse works of authors that engage with complex and challenging issues, provoking conversation and debate\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the university supports freedom of speech and UQP\u2019s editorial independence, this is not unlimited,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot overlook or condone the abhorrent statements made by [Matt Chun] about the victims who were shot and killed in the Bondi terror attacks. It is because of these statements that this publication of Bila, A River Cycle will not proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have acknowledged that this outcome may not align with the views of some authors and staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 28 February, University of Queensland Press received an email from one of its authors warning of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-645834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}