Philippa Maddern completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Indonesian Studies at Melbourne University, and a D. Phil in medieval British History at Oxford University, United Kingdom. She taught history at Monash and Melbourne Universities in Melbourne, and moved to Perth in 1989 to lecture at the University of Western Australia.
In 1975 and again in 1977 Maddern attended two writers' workshops, the first with British author Ursula le Guin. The workshops inspired her first published fiction.
