Six writers - Alison Evans, Amie Kaufman, Jinghua Qian, Ariel Slamet Ries, Morgan Rose and Omar Sakr - were scheduled to appear at a series of online Teen Writing Bootcamp events for young people run by the State Library Victoria in March 2024. On 28 February 2024, the entire program was cancelled and indefinitely postponed by the library who cited that a "child and cultural safety" review was necessary at a time of "heightened sensitivities."
Public speculation in the Australian media followed that the actual reason was four of the authors' public support of Palestine in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, and that the cancellation was an attempt at censorship. Accounts of numerous Library staff and internal Library emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act have since confirmed that the writers' political views and religious backgrounds were scrutinised at length by Library staff in the leadup to the cancellation.