A Writer's Guide to Calgary

Central Library is the main branch of Calgary Public Library, at the edge of the downtown core. Its quiet study rooms suit a morning of drafting, and a writing group can meet in one of the meeting rooms. Printers and free Wi-Fi are on hand.

Memorial Park was Alberta's first public library, a Carnegie library that opened in 1912 after a campaign led by Annie Davidson of the Calgary Women's Literary Club. It is a National Historic Site. A 2020 renovation brought the interior closer to how it looked at opening. Book a meeting room through the library's Book a Space page.

Louise Riley is a northwest branch with study space, a meeting room and free Wi-Fi. There is parking.

Archives and Special Collections keeps the Canadian Literary Archives and the Glenbow Library and Archives, and the Mordecai Richler papers are here too. Its more than 230,000 rare and special book items are strong in Canadian literature, genre fiction and western Canadian history. Community members are welcome. The reading room in the Glenbow Western Research Centre opens weekdays by appointment; book through the Contact Us page.

Shelf Life Books hosts author appearances and launches, and it runs book clubs, a book-of-the-month club among them. Will Ferguson and Vivek Shraya have both appeared here. Local writers come in to read and browse.

Owl's Nest has been Calgary's local independent bookstore since 1975, and Read Alberta calls it the city's oldest. It sells new books for readers from children to adults and holds book signings. Its in-house clubs include the Hootdunnit mystery club and QUEEReads YYC.

Pages calls itself Calgary's literary meeting place. Fiction is on the main floor, non-fiction upstairs, and used and bargain books in the basement. Local authors give events here.

David Sidjak's Sigla Books sells used books, with the emphasis on literary titles. Sidjak stocks what he calls semi-forgotten authors and titles, many of them 30 to 50 years old or older. The shop is in the building that once housed Wordsworth Books, next to Loophole Coffee Bar.

The Next Page is a locally owned shop in a 1912 heritage building on Inglewood's historic Burn Block. New and remainder books are on the main floor and used books in the basement. There is an espresso bar too. The shop features LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors.

Nocturne was Alberta's first independent bookstore focused on horror and dark fiction. It carries fantasy and science fiction too, for readers of all ages.

Sisters Nicola and Shannon MacNaughton opened Slow Burn Books, a romance bookstore, in 2023. It runs a monthly book club and hosts readings and author signings. Indie and self-published authors can send in its intake form.

cSPACE turned a historic sandstone school into a creative hub with artist studios and hallway galleries. An Aroma Café is on site. Its coworking space, The Sandbox, rents hot desks and dedicated desks, and membership includes Wi-Fi, meeting-room hours and free black-and-white printing. The Alexandra Writers' Centre is in the same building. Closed Sundays.

Rosso keeps its longest hours at this Inglewood café, which opens early and stays open into the evening every day. The Next Page is a short walk west along 9 Avenue SE.

Rosso's Ramsay café, just south of Inglewood, is open daily from early morning to late afternoon.

Gravity's Eau Claire café is in the Festival District, near Prince's Island Park and Chinatown. It is open daily until early evening.

The King Eddy is the 1905 King Edward Hotel, which the National Music Centre reopened in 2018 as a restaurant, bar and all-ages music venue. CKUA Calgary and NMC's recording studios share the building. Acoustic afternoons and happy-hour sets come before the evening shows.

The café inside Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre, keeps the museum's hours. The King Eddy is across the street.

Gravity calls its Inglewood café the beating heart of Calgary's Music Mile. It is a live music venue as well as a café and stays open into the evening most days. The family-run company says it has supported more than 3,500 live performances.

Last Best is a brewery and distillery that serves Alberta-inspired food. The Writers' Guild of Alberta has held a poetry open mic in its upstairs dining room.

Wordfest, Calgary's literary non-profit, works from the second floor of Memorial Park Library. Besides its annual Imaginairium festival, it puts on author shows all year at Central Library, Memorial Park Library and other venues around the city. Imagine On Air is its audio series. Wordfest Youth connects students in Grades 5-12 with writers.

The Alexandra Writers' Centre Society teaches more than 100 creative writing courses and workshops a year, for adults and youth at every level. Its featured events are the Get Lit mini-conference and the Writers' Life Speaker Series. It also runs writing retreats and an Author Development Program. Ask about scholarships and subsidies.

The Writers' Guild of Alberta serves professional and emerging writers across the province. For work in progress, it offers a Manuscript Reading Service and a Mentorship Program. Horizons Writers Circle is another of its programs. The Guild also holds retreats and an annual conference, and it publishes WestWord magazine.

The Calgary Institute for the Humanities holds an Annual Community Forum. Its lecture series include the Egmont Lee Founders' Lecture and the Applied Ethics Lecture Series. The Calgary Atlas Project is its series of maps of the city; one traces Calgary's Latin American roots.

University of Calgary Press publishes scholarly books across the humanities and social sciences, and its Brave & Brilliant imprint publishes fiction and poetry. The scholarly books come out open access, as free PDFs and on the press's Manifold platform, and are sold in print. Manifold also posts selected titles for public review before publication.

Freehand Books began in 2007 as the literary imprint of Broadview Press and has been independent since 2016. It publishes literary novels, short story collections and creative non-fiction. Graphic literature is on the list too, graphic memoir included.

Critique of Anthropology is a peer-reviewed SAGE journal for cross-cultural, socially critical scholarship on social power and the formation of ideologies in past and present societies. Its corresponding editor is a professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary. Preparing an article for Critique of Anthropology

The Alberta Foundation for the Arts funds Alberta-resident writers working on a specific literary project, from novels and poetry to picture books, translation and literary nonfiction. The grant can cover drafting or research, marketing a finished work, or training and career development.

Calgary Arts Development gives one-time project funding to professional Calgary-based artists and collectives, and literary artists are eligible. Research and creation counts, as do residencies, mentorships and presenting your work.

The City of Calgary gives this annual prize to a book by a Calgary author in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, children's literature or drama. The Writers' Guild of Alberta administers it with an independent jury, and the prize is presented at the Calgary Awards.

The Writers' Guild of Alberta has given these awards to Alberta authors since 1982. Book prizes cover fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, drama and children's literature, and the short-form awards include the short story and the essay. The Golden Pen Award honours lifetime achievement.

This annual Writers' Guild of Alberta scholarship is for emerging First Nations, Métis and Inuit writers who are mothers living in Alberta.

Summer research awards, graduate funding and the university's free writing consultations are gathered on this page.

Blitzprint has printed short runs of perfect-bound and hardcover books for self-published authors since 1990. Its site has free interior and cover templates and a spine calculator. The self-publishing page explains how to get a free ISBN from Library and Archives Canada.