Cork's publishing houses second to none

Dublin is the first city, but when it comes to book publishing, Cork city and county have as impressive a list of publishing houses as those in business in the capital. Alongside the three big houses of Cork University Press, Mercier, and Collins are several other small presses.

"Durrus has five pubs and two publishing houses," says John McKenna, who runs Estragon Press there with his wife, Sally. Mr McKenna, who is The Irish Times food critic, explains the press's name was not solely inspired by the character in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. "Estragon is the French word for tarragon and all our books are about food."

Set up in 1991, the McKennas run the press from their house. "We would use the network which most small publishers in this country would avail of. We input and layout on Apple Macs and send the books to be printed at Colour Books in Dublin. From there, they go to Gill and Macmillan, who then distribute them around the country."

The McKennas are unusual in that they publish only books which they have written themselves - but their operation is not to be confused with that sad creature known as vanity publishing. "We've never applied for Arts Council funding, but we have sponsorship from Bridgestone," says Mr McKenna. It is the Bridgestone Guides to restaurants and places to stay for which Estragon is best known.

The second publishing house resident in Durrus is Fish Publishing. Set up in 1994, it publishes only one book a year, yet has a remarkably high profile. The annual book is an anthology of short stories, which are selected through a nationwide competition. The latest title is Scrap Magic and Other Stories. Previous titles include The Fish Garden and Other Stories; and A Stranger and Other Stories. The books take their names from the winning story.

A panel of three judges makes the final decisions. Last year, 1,200 stories were submitted.

Clem Cairns runs Fish with his partner, Jula Walton. They receive Arts Council funding, and do all the work in the winter. "It's very difficult for new writers to get published in Ireland," he says. "Especially short stories. I thought this would be an outlet for those writers. And we have only published one book a year so far, but it has always been our intention to publish more.

"The idea was that we were hoping some of the short story writers would have novels in them. This May we're publishing our first novel, The Altergeist, which is set in Ireland after a nuclear war. It's by Tim Booth, who had a story in Scrap Magic."

Gandon Editions is based in Oysterhaven, Kinsale. Like Estragon and Fish, it's also a twoperson operation. John O'Regan runs the press with his partner, Nicola Dearey. "I dabbled in publishing when I was an architecture student," says Mr O'Regan. "Between 1979 and 1983, I published an annual review of student design work, which would have been 180 pages in length. But it was just impossible to keep things going once the recession hit."

In 1990, Gandon re-established itself, publishing a range of art and architecture books. "Our best known books are probably The Works series," says Mr O'Regan. These are 20 little colour-illustrated books, each of which profile an Irish artist. Gandon is now publishing another series, in a larger format, entitled Profiles. These will feature both artists and architects. Among those already featured in the series are Sean McSweeney and Charlie Harper.

Back in Cork city, Ossian Publications has been going on MacCurtain Street for 20 years. Publisher John Loesberg is a Dutchman with a love of Irish culture. "He left Holland 25 years ago to travel and busk his way around Europe and he never went back," relates Frances Hamilton, who is Ossian's development manager.

Ossian publishes song and ballad books, as well as music books for teachers. There can hardly be a pub or house in the State that doesn't contain one of its four little Folksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland. For years, John Loesberg used to go out and actually collect the songs and tunes himself.

There is a staff of 10 at Ossian now, and it has published 120 books to date. "This year, we're really just concentrating on one huge project; a complete edition of O'Neill's tunes. There's over 3,000 of them. That'll be our big book this year," says Ms Hamilton. Cork University Press is the granddaddy of publishing in Cork, as it was established in 1925. "It's the oldest commercially active university press in Ireland," says publisher Sara Wilbourne. CUP has a staff of six and publishes about 20 books a year, mainly academic titles and Irish cultural studies. It also has the Attic Press imprint.

One of its most successful titles has been The Cork Anthology, edited by the late Sean Dunne. "That's been a consistent seller since it came out first in 1993." But CUP's runaway bestseller is The Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. "We published that in June 1997 and we've sold 15,000 copies. It's been reprinted three times and it's still selling," Ms Wilbourne reports delightedly.