Hilary founded the influential imprint McPhee Gribble in 1975 with friend Diana Gribble, publishing such watershed Australian works as Helen Garner’s debut Monkey Grip, Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette’s Puberty Blues, Tim Winton’s celebrated Cloudstreet, and Lardil woman Elsie Roughsey (née Labumore) An Aboriginal Mother Tells of the Old and the New. Hilary later ran the Picador imprint at Pan Macmillan Australia, where she published books including Helen Garner’s The First Stone and Tim Winton’s The Riders.
(L to R) Diana Gribble and Hilary McPhee. Photo by Elizabeth Gilliam, courtesy State Library of Victoria.
In 1994, Hilary was selected to become the first woman Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia). During her four-year term, she presided over an unprecedented period of change for the Australia Council, leaving it a more streamlined, transparent and focused body.
Among her many accolades, Hilary was awarded an Order of Australia for her service to literature and the arts in 2001, inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in the same year, received an honorary doctorate from Monash University in 1992, and was appointed as the inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 1997.
Hilary was a co-founding director and occasional editor of New Matilda, and wrote two memoirs, Other People’s Words (2001) and Other People’s Houses (2019).
Adrian Collette AM, CEO, Creative Australia said:
"Hilary McPhee made an enormous contribution during her term as Chair of the Australia Council. She oversaw a major policy and structural review that ensured the organisation was well placed to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the time. She will be remembered by former colleagues and by the literary sector at large as a tenacious, visionary leader, an exceptional editor and iconic literary identity, who nourished the careers of some of Australia’s finest voices."
We extend our heartfelt condolences to Hilary's family, friends and collaborators.
Hilary McPhee AO
1941-2026
Header image: Hilary McPhee courtesy Creative Australia archives
We acknowledge the many Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and honour their Elders past and present.
We respect their deep enduring connection to their lands, waterways, and surrounding clan groups since time immemorial. We cherish the richness of First Nations peoples’ artistic and cultural expressions. We are privileged to gather on this Country and to share knowledge, culture and art, now and with future generations.
