The Editor’s Luck - Wellington publisher Fergus Barrowman has been in the right place at the right time for 28 years.

Fergus Barrowman has been synonymous with Victoria University Press for two and a half decades. “I started working part-time at VUP in 1984 and became full-time in 1985. No one’s ever made me a better offer.”

For almost as long, he’s been the partner of author Elizabeth Knox. “We were introduced by Bill Manhire at lunch one day to talk about publishing plans for After Z-Hour [her first book], and at a certain point the conversation got on to [cult comic book series] Love and Rockets, and Bill made his excuses and left.”

The couple celebrated their 23rd wedding anniversary on Waitangi Day: “By ‘celebrated’, I mean I worked on Sport and Elizabeth worked on the US publisher’s copy-edits on her new Young Adult novel, The Zarene Alphabet.”

Footnote:

So begins a story in the March issue of Metro in which Jolisa Gracewood interviews one of NZ's most durable book publishers.

I found the interview most interesting and in fact I rate this issue of the Auckland city magazine the best in several years both from design and content perspectives. Metro is one of my favourite magazines and under the editorship of Simon Wilson it is going from strength to strength.The two page spread featuring Fergus Barrowman is followed by three pages of book reviews.Well done Metro.