First Friday, our monthly conversation with an industry professional, is a chance for our community to learn more about the writing and publishing industry. This October, we invite you to our online event with Phillipa McGuinness; author, former publisher, and current editor of the State Library of NSW’s glossy quarterly magazine, Openbook.

Pip will be joining Writing NSW to talk about what it’s like to edit a major literary magazine, life inside one of NSW’s most venerable literary institutions and what she’s learned in her years in publishing.

This event starts online at 12:30pm, via Zoom, and will run for 60 minutes. If there is time, we will take audience questions at the end. Free and open to members and non-members, but RSVPs are essential.

Registered attendees will receive a link to access this event prior to the start time.

Phillipa McGuinness is the editor of Openbook, the glossy quarterly magazine of the State Library of NSW. A previous book publisher of many award-winning books of non-fiction, she is also the author of The Year Everything Changed — 2001 (2018) and Skin Deep: The inside story of our outer selves (2022), both published by Penguin Random House. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Weekend Australian Magazine, The Australian Women’s Weekly and Inside Story.