Writer Randa Abdel-Fattah is threatening South Australia's premier with legal action, alleging a "vicious personal assault" that suggested she was an extremist terrorist sympathiser.
A day after the Adelaide Festival cancelled Adelaide Writers' Week following a mass boycott over Abdel-Fattah's axing from its programme, she announced on social media that her lawyers had issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act against Peter Malinauskas.
The premier had "made many public statements about me and my character", she said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday Mr Malinauskas went even further. He made a public statement that suggested l am an extremist terrorist sympathiser and directly linked me to the Bondi atrocity.
"This was a vicious personal assault on me, a private citizen, by the highest public official in South Australia. It was defamatory and it terrified me."
At a press conference on Tuesday, Malinauskas said: "Can you imagine if a far right Zionist walked into a Sydney mosque and murdered 15 people. Can you imagine that as premier of this state, I would actively support a far right Zionist going to writers week and speaking hateful rhetoric towards Islamic people? Of course I wouldn't.
"The reverse is happening in this instance, and I'm not going to support that either, and I think that's a reasonable position for me to have."
Abdel-Fattah said she was "a human being, not a punching bag" and her lawyers had issued a concerns notice under the Defamation Act.
"This is his opportunity to undo some of the harm he has inflicted, and stop punching down," she said.
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Malinauskas' office has been contacted for comment.
The Adelaide Festival board's decision to dump the writer triggered a boycott as authors and speakers pulled out in solidarity with the academic, resulting in the February event being cancelled on Tuesday.
The board initially claimed past statements from Dr Abdel-Fattah, who has criticised Israel on social media, meant it would not be "culturally sensitive" for her to appear at the festival so soon after an anti-Semitic terror attack at Bondi Beach.
But on Tuesday, it apologised to Abdel-Fattah and announced remaining members of the board would quit immediately or be gone by February 2.
Abdel-Fattah has been targeted by conservative Jewish groups for sharing posts critical of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
Late on Tuesday, Abdel-Fattah said she was exhausted and rejected the board's "disingenuous" apology.
"It is clear the board's regret extends to how the message of my cancellation was conveyed, not the decision itself," she said.
The board's statement came hours after Adelaide Writers' Week director Louise Adler resigned, saying she had fought against the prominent academic's axing.
The renowned publisher, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, had helmed the writers' week since 2022.
"I cannot be party to silencing writers so, with a heavy heart, I am resigning from my role as the director of the AWW," she wrote in an opinion piece published in The Guardian on Tuesday.
"Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us."
Arts Minister Andrea Michaels announced on Tuesday that former chairwoman Judy Potter would return to head up a new Adelaide Festival board.
"We've had a very challenging week ... we really need to wrap our arms around the Adelaide Festival as a state," Michaels said.
Former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Stella Prize winner Evelyn Araluen and former political prisoner and foreign correspondent Peter Greste were among the high-profile figures who pulled out of the event.
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