Politician to publisher DEBORAH'S TALES COULD FILL A BOOK

At 70 years young, the former journalist is back in business, hunting down the next Kiwi Booker Prize!

- Fleur Guthrie

Deborah Coddington took the 10-day trial version of retirement and found that aimlessly rearranging the furniture wasn't for her.

So at 70, with a life that's revolved around words, the award-winning journalist, author and former Act MP decided she needed a new challenge for her creative spirit.

Deborah's recently set up a small niche publishing company called Ugly Hill Press - named for the country road she grew up on in Hawke's Bay in a move that's more about coming full circle than it is starting a new chapter.

After selling The Martinborough Bookshop (the first to open in the historical Wairarapa town), she has returned to publishing after working in the industry in the 1980s, and now wants to produce books about New Zealand landscapes, people and places where they work.

Peering from her laptop on a Zoom call with the Weekly, Deborah is makeup-free, wearing round black spectacles and hands clasped in finger less woollen gloves. ("No one would recognise me from what you're looking at now to what you see in the photos!")

She muses that her restless energy has never left her in peace.

"I sold the bookshop, where I worked seven days a week, and I was going to retire," she tells. "After about 10 days of wandering around the house, I thought, 'I just can't do retirement. I've got to have a project.'

"In the background, I did have plans for a coffee-table book on 35 independent bookstores of New Zealand with photos by Jane Ussher.

"I pitched it to another publisher, who wasn't incredibly keen on it. So I thought, 'I got a good price for the bookshop - I should probably put my own money into this and realise my own visions of what sort of books I want to publish.'

"But launching a publishing company is much scarier than opening a bookshop. You're spending all this money and not getting any of it back until the books go on sale."