Phillippa Duffy

Phillippa Duffy has spent a happy 20+ years in the book industry, including both trade and educational publishing. For the past eight years, she has been General Manager of University Book Shop (Otago) Ltd, a registered charity wholly owned by Otago University Students’ Association. She was a judge for the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (Poetry) and is a current trustee of the Dunedin Athenaeum & Mechanics Institute, and the Ignition Children’s Festival. She was one of four founding trustees of the Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival and a 2020 finalist for Emerging Business Leader in the Westpac Otago Business Awards where the bookshop was a finalist in the Retail Excellence category.

Phillippa has a BA (Hons) in English from the University of Otago where she specialised in Old and Medieval English alongside New Zealand Literature. In December 2020, she completed a DipGrad in Politics from Otago and is trying to squeeze in the last few papers for a BCom in Economics in the gaps between work, family, reading, and sleeping.

Phillippa also has an interest in heritage buildings, successfully promoting a Category II Historic Places Trust listing for the University Book Shop building, originally built as the Romison Confectionary Company factory and shop in 1910. She lived in a listed cottage in Rosebery Street, before moving to an RA Lawson-designed ‘doer upper’ near the centre of town where she lives with her husband and primary school-aged children.
​
Originally from a farm in rural Southland, she is as proud of living south of the 45th parallel as she is of being an Arts graduate.

​
Phillippa Duffy at DWRF 2021:
Girl in the Mirror​

Photo credit: Graham Warman