Guest Speaker: Phillippa Duffy 

By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:

Creative Cities Southern Hui warmly welcomes PHILLIPPA DUFFY as guest speaker. Phillippa will be speaking at Centre for the Book: Books and Users on Wednesday 29th November.

Phillippa has been the General Manager of the University Book Shop (Otago) since late 2012.

Her career spans over seventeen years in both the bookselling and publishing worlds (including trade and education publishing), and also includes work in the tertiary sector, aviation and tourism.

She is a recent Director of Booksellers NZ, a current Trustee of the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, and spent four years as a trustee and Deputy Chair of Southland's Dan Davin Literary Foundation.

Duffy is a stalwart of the power of the written word to change lives regardless of background, and in celebrating New Zealand writers and writing – particularly those from throughout Otago and Southland and those with a strong, distinctive New Zealand voice. As a proud University of Otago Graduate (BA Honours in English) she considers honing the right balance between business and bookselling is the key to the success of the bookshop alongside working with a stellar team of professional, expert, eccentric and widely read booksellers.

In her spare time she's the mother to two bookworms of her own, a sometimes student humbly (and slowly!) finishing an accounting degree and a graduate diploma in economics (also through the University of Otago) and can be occasionally found in her Lilliput-library hosting garden, hiding amongst the weeds, quoting Rudyard Kipling: "Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade."

The title of Phillippa's presentation is 'A Book in the Hand...Worth its Weight in Gold'. 

'My talk, explores the intersections between early exposure to books and reading and literacy and life success: effectively how the pathway for a successful professional life is laid down in the first 0–3 years. Regardless of background, a life where books and a love of language are introduced early in a child's life really can pave for them a path of metaphorical and literal riches'.

The University of Otago's Centre for the Book: Books and Users symposium, on Wednesday 29th November, explores the many ways we interact with the ubiquitous object we call the book, and probes the meaning of  'user'.