Editor and publisher, Hilary McPhee founded McPhee Gribble publishers with Diana Gribble in 1975. The firm was at the cutting edge of Australian publishing for fourteen years until it was bought by Penguin Books in 1989. From 1994 to 1997 Hilary McPhee was Chair of the Australia Council and of the Major Organizations Board. At the time of the publication of her memoir Other People's Words she was a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Melbourne where the McPhee Gribble Archive is housed.