Books are my business: Founder of Fish Publishing Clem Cairns

Clem Cairns: Casting out his net for new writers.

Clem Cairns is the founder of Fish Publishing, which he started with Jula Walton in 1994 with the aim of promoting the work of new writers.

It is based in Durrus, Co Cork, and every year publishes the Fish Anthology, featuring the winners of the Fish short story, short memoir, flash fiction and poetry prizes.

How did you get into publishing?

It is 30 years now since we founded Fish Publishing. I was trying to be a writer and there weren’t that many outlets in Ireland at that time for new writers, particularly for short fiction. Myself and my partner Jula Walton decided we would publish short Irish fiction, and we would do it by running a competition.

That was the initial idea. We called it Fish Publishing because I was working on a fishing trawler out of Schull at the time to earn the money to publish my first book of short stories. It was a good metaphor — casting out a net and hauling in the stories. We wanted to promote and encourage a new generation of Irish writers. After a few years, the internet happened and it went worldwide.

What does your role involve?

These days I can do 90% of the work from my laptop, as many people can. I work my own hours, at certain times of the year it is long hours and long days, other times it is not so bad. It is the work I love and the work I am committed to. The day I wake up and that is not the case is the day I stop. It is still such a thrill to get in all these new stories. We have extended it [the competition] from short stories to include flash fiction and memoir.

We also run online courses and offer editorial services. It has become a richer tapestry in that way. It is a way for me to meet writers and keep in touch with that world, rather than just reading. I have found that over the years writers have been interesting people to know, they are the kind of people I like.

What do you like most about what you do?

I like reading. I love the stories. You get in a story that just knocks your socks off. It’s just that feeling, you sit back in wonder, and you think, ‘god, I’m privileged to publish this’. It is also great to see a lot of the people who we publish early on who go on to be pretty successful writers and poets; we are that little link in the chain, that maybe propels them on to another stage.

What do you like least?

Shift work. A lot of it is the kind of administration that when I’m online, I cause people like me a great deal of trouble; I can be pretty daft, stupid and impatient on other people’s websites. So when they get screwed up on mine, I really feel their pain. 

It is not necessarily enjoyable work but it is very important because people are paying their money to enter one of our competitions, the worst thing is if you have given your money and you feel like you have been forgotten about. We do try really hard to make everyone feel that their work is important.

Three desert island books

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, which is probably the only book I have read more than five times. I read it first in school when I was about 13 and I thought it was the funniest book I had ever read. I gave it to one of my classmates and he said it was the saddest book he had ever read. We both read it again and I saw what he saw and he saw what I saw. It was possibly my first experience of the multi-facetedness of a really good book.

The Best of Myles, by Flann O’Brien, which is a book I have had since college. Every time I open that book I am blown away by the man’s intelligent wit and how scathing he could be. And it’s a good thick book.

The third one is The Singularities by John Banville. I could have picked any of his books, which I could read over and over because of the beauty of the prose. He is an astonishing writer but that one is possibly his best. How the man is not a Nobel laureate I do not know.

The Fish Anthology will be launched at 6.30pm on July 15, at the Marino (Old Methodist) Church, Bantry, as part of the West Cork Literary Festival