Biography

Hilary McPhee is a writer and editor.

She was a founding director of McPhee Gribble Publishers and Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts and of the Major Organizations Board 1994-7, a founding director and editor of online political newsletter New Matilda.com. She has an honorary doctorate from Monash University, was the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne and remains a senior Fellow of the University.

From 2006-9 she was living and working between the Middle East and Italy, writing a book about the region and articles about matching philanthropic initiatives to the needs of young people.

Other People’s Words, published in 2001, documents her publishing life. She continues to publish widely in Australia about cultural policy and literature and her selection of recent Australian writing, Wordlines, was published in 2010. She is currently annotating and editing film maker Tim Burstall’s diaries from the early 1950s for MUP and writing a companion volume to Other People’s Words.

She was awarded an Order of Australia for service to the Arts in 2003.