Publisher drops Chun over comments
Authors boycott UQP after children’s book dropped over illustrator’s comments on Bondi massacre victims.
Several authors have boycotted University of Queensland Press after it cancelled a children’s book illustrated by anti-Zionist Matt Chun, who claimed Australians “impulsively mourned” Bondi Beach massacre victims due to their “whiteness, Jewishness”.
Authors boycotting UQP include Randa Abdel-Fattah, Melissa Lucashenko, Omar Sakr, Sara Haddad, Dženana Vucic and Natalia Figueroa Barroso.
UQP cancelled the children’s book Bila: A River Cycle, written by Indigenous poet Jazz Money and illustrated by Chun, after the Bondi massacre.
In an essay titled “We Don’t Mourn Fascists”, Chun claimed Australians had “impulsively mourned the loss of ‘innocent lives’ … Whiteness, Jewishness, and the backdrop of Bondi Beach were enough to bestow every person killed with default innocence and virtue”.
Chun added: “This played directly into the hands of Zionists and their calculated media. As a result, few people would have known that the targeted event was the broad-daylight celebration of a violent supremacist organisation deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.”
On January 30, UQP reportedly advised Chun that the book was “paused”, referring to his online comments.
In a statement, UQP said it had “determined that the statements made by Matt Chun do not align with the university’s policies and values including in light of its adopted definition of antisemitism”.
“The university regrets the impact this matter has on the author of Bila, A River Cycle, Jazz Money. We have enormous respect for Jazz and her work and we would welcome the opportunity to work with Jazz again in the future,” the statement said.
In response, Chun posted that UQP “had not identified a single term from our publishing agreement that could be used to justify its termination”. Several UQP staff signed a letter asking the publisher to reconsider its decision to cancel Bila.
In 2023, Chun received a $42,000 grant from Creative Australia, together with Indigenous writer Amy McQuire, to create a children’s book titled Policing in Australia. It is unclear if the book has been published.
A spokesperson for Creative Australia told the Jewish Independent the grant was given for the creation of the book but was not contingent on it being published. Creative Australia said it was obtaining legal advice on how to address behaviour by future grant recipients that includes hate speech.