Books are my business: Doire Press co-director Lisa Frank
Doire Press co-director Lisa Frank says the venture 'started out in a very organic way'.
Lisa Frank, originally from Los Angeles, is co-director of Doire Press along with her husband, John Walsh. They are based in Co Galway.
I was doing an MFA course in creative writing, and there were various programmes where you could do a summer writing course and get credit for it.
I had always wanted to come to Ireland, although, unlike most Americans, I don’t have any Irish roots.
But I loved the idea of the literary landscape here and that there’s so many writers who have come from such a small country.
I found an excellent programme in Galway run by Michael Gorman and Moya Cannon.
I came for the month — I was in my early 30s — and I just had a really great time and fell in love with Galway.
We set up Doire Press in 2007, unofficially. John had received a publication grant from Galway County Council for his second poetry book and he knew I had some publishing experience so we brought out his book called .
John was also running a poetry slam in Galway called North Beach Nights and he thought instead of a financial prize, why not make a book prize for the annual grand slam winner. So we did that and had a really great time with it.
We also knew some local Galway poets who didn’t have the opportunity to publish so we just approached them and the books worked out well.
And then we did some fiction; it was all Galway-based writers at the beginning. Then we started getting submissions and publishing further afield, but it all started out in a very organic way.
The role has kind of evolved over the years because at the beginning we were doing every everything ourselves from the editing and layout to the website, which neither of us had any idea about.
Now thankfully, we can pay people to do some of the work for us.
I still do the text layout, which is probably my favourite part of the job.
There’s a lot to like in this job. You’re working with a broad range of people who are all incredibly interesting — no one is doing it for the money, they’re all doing it for the love of books. That makes it really nice.
When we started, we would hand the books to the writers themselves, and make this big production out of it where we would wrap the book up about 15 times and watch the writer unwrap all the layers. You feel like Santa Claus with it.
I would say right now what has really become a great experience is going to festivals and watching the authors we work with read, and seeing the audience reaction.
Probably dealing with social media. I find it exhausting and I don’t like the nasty side of it. The whole thing goes against my personality.
The first would be by Richard Russo — I’m on my third reading of it. The first time I read it was when I was an undergrad about 25 years ago.
The second one is by Aimee Bender, another American writer, who is absolutely wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever read a writer with so much imagination. And it has one of the best first lines.
The final one would be by David Park, my favourite Irish writer.
It’s a very moving account of a father who is travelling in terrible weather to collect his very ill son and then the back story is there’s another son who has died and it’s the unravelling of that. His writing is so powerful.
It is also first-person narrative, which I love, but a lot of writers don’t get right. He does it so well. The writing itself is gorgeous, but not pretentious. I don’t think he gets enough recognition.
- www.doirepress.com
