Hilary McPhee

Hilary Jane McPhee (born 1941) is an Australian writer and editor. She was awarded an Order of Australia for service to the Arts in 2003.

Biography McPhee was born in 1941. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne.

She was a founding director, with Diana Gribble, of McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1975–89, and Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts and of the Major Organizations Board 1994-7, a founding director and sometime editor of online political newsletter NewMatilda.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 2006-10 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. Her marriage in 1986 to writer Don Watson ended in divorce in 2009.

Other People's Words, published in 2001, documents her publishing life. Her selection of Australian writing, Wordlines, was published in 2010. She annotated and edited film maker Tim Burstall's diaries from the early 1950s, published by MUP as Memoirs of a Young Bastard: the Diaries of Tim Burstall.

Other People's Houses, is a memoir, it was published by MUP in November 2019.

She was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001 and appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for service to the Arts in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours.

In 2016, The Hilary McPhee Award for an essay published in Meanjin was established by the University of Melbourne, from a donation made by McPhee's brother Professor Peter McPhee.

Private life She married artist Peter Freeman in 1964 with whom she has a daughter, Sara Harriet Freeman, and a son, Rupert. In 1976 she married publisher, John Michie with whom she has a son, James.