A Writer's Guide to Canterbury

Kent County Council's Canterbury library shares the Beaney with the city museum and art gallery. It has study space, and public PCs and Wi-Fi sessions can be booked ahead. Local history resources are here too. Groups of up to 25 can hire the Community Room on the mezzanine, which has lift access, a meeting table and a wall-mounted screen.

The Cathedral's archive holds manuscripts and records from the late 8th century on, along with photographs, maps and printed books. The Howley-Harrison Library adds about 16,000 books and pamphlets. Search the catalogues online first. The Reading Room is usually open on Wednesdays and Thursdays; book by email at least five working days ahead, and enter through the Christ Church Gate Visitor Centre and the Cloister.

Christ Church's Canterbury library is about five minutes from the city centre, and members of the public can apply for access. Computers are spread across three floors. For a long session, take a soundproof private study room or a desk in the quiet zone.

The Chaucer Bookshop stocks more than 20,000 secondhand and antiquarian books near the Cathedral, and only about a third of them are listed online. Go in person. Fine bindings share the shelves with paperbacks, and there is a good collection of original prints and maps.

Catching Lives runs its charity bookshop over three floors of the Crooked House, the skewed 17th-century building also called Sir John Boys House. The shelves hold classic and modern fiction beside collectable and rare books. Proceeds support people experiencing homelessness.

Chapters is a bookshop and café that runs author events and book launches. Writers can join its free Quiet Writing Group. Readers have the Canterbury Silent Book Club and a classics book club, and the Chapters Unplugged evenings mix words and music.

Christ Church's campus bookshop is open to the public and stocks everything from set texts to fiction, along with signed books. It is the official bookshop of the Canterbury Festival and Canterbury History Weekend. You will also find it at the university's public lectures and author events.

Garage Coffee roasts its beans every week and runs this café on Sun Street. Laptops are allowed, and it opens daily.

Boho is a family-run café where students settle in for long study sessions, indoors or out in the garden. The menu is European, with a vegetarian dish every day and vegan dishes on request. It opens daily. On Fridays and Saturdays it stays open late.

The café at the Gulbenkian, the University of Kent's arts centre, serves brunch on weekdays, then Roman pizza and deli sandwiches. Food runs into the evening, so you can eat before a play or an NT Live screening. It is open daily.

Canterbury Festival is the city's two-week arts festival each autumn. Talks and theatre share the programme with concerts and family events, and activity carries on through the year. Its Poet of the Year competition prints the longlisted poems in an annual anthology.

The Marlowe Society is a registered charity that promotes education in Elizabethan literature, with its focus on Christopher Marlowe, who was born in Canterbury. It encourages performances of his plays and research-based publication about him. Members receive newsletters of articles and reviews and meet three times a year. They can also use a Marlowe Library in Canterbury and read the Society's 1587 copy of Holinshed's Chronicles in the University of Kent's Special Collections.

Margate Bookie bills itself as the friendly litfest by the sea. The not-for-profit festival runs in October, pairing author talks with a day of writing workshops and a showcase where Thanet writers read from their latest work.

Creative Folkestone runs this book festival every November. Its author talks sit alongside a Folkestone Voices strand.

Kent's Special Collections hold the British Cartoon Archive, about 200 years of British cartooning, and the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive. Theatre historians will want the Pettingell Collection of popular stage writing from the 18th to the early 20th century. Anyone can view material by appointment in the reading room, which is open Tuesday to Friday. The main Templeman Library also admits visitors for reference use; ask staff at the main entrance.

MEMS brings Kent's research on the medieval and early modern periods together across disciplines. Students on its taught MAs can spend a term at Kent's Paris centre. It also offers a research MA and PhDs.

Kent launched this centre in 2020 for the study of the Anglican Communion worldwide. Its seminars, lectures and reading group connect scholars inside and outside the university. With Canterbury Christ Church University and Canterbury Cathedral, it is building a base for Anglican studies in the city.

Primary Health Care Research & Development is a fully open access Cambridge University Press journal for international, interdisciplinary work that connects research, policy and practice in primary health care. It has a particular interest in the integration of services and transitions in care. One of its two editors-in-chief is at the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent. Preparing an article for Primary Health Care Research & Development

Project Grants is Arts Council England's open access programme for arts, libraries and museums projects. Individual practitioners can apply, as can community and cultural organisations.

The Royal Literary Fund supports professional writers in the UK. It makes grants to writers facing an unexpected bill or reduced income, or unable to write through illness, disability, age or changed circumstances. Its paid Fellowships place writers in more than 100 UK universities to help students with academic writing.

Canterbury Festival runs this annual competition. Poems can take any subject and any form, and they are judged anonymously. The shortlist is read at an online Awards Evening, where the winners are announced.

The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society, centred on Tunbridge Wells and founded by Vita Sackville-West, runs an annual open poetry competition judged by well-known poets. Prize-winning poems appear in the Society's annual Folio and on its website.