A Writer's Guide to Cleveland

The Main Library fills a city block downtown. Its third-floor Special Collections hold what the library calls the world's largest collection of chess literature, along with folklore and medieval manuscripts, and you can ask to see anything in the collection. The Center for Local and Global History is on the sixth floor. It is closed Sundays.

Visitors with their own research can enter Case Western Reserve's Kelvin Smith Library with a photo ID, and anyone may study in the Hatch Reading Room on weekdays. Special Collections holds rare books and manuscripts. To use them, set up an Aeon account and book a weekday appointment.

The Western Reserve Historical Society's research library is devoted to the history of Northeast Ohio. Its holdings run from newspapers and microfilm to personal papers and photographs, and genealogists can use sources such as funeral-home indexes. Contact the society about hours and access before you visit.

The museum's Ingalls Library is open to the public for art-historical research, with more than 580,000 volumes in closed stacks. Register online first. Staff bring requested items to the Sears Reading Room, which is open Tuesday through Friday.

Visible Voice sells new, used, and rare books in the building that once housed the Lorain Theatre, with a focus on modern fiction and poetry. Poets read on its restored historic stage, which also hosts signings and concerts. There is a coffee bar and a sandwich counter. It is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

ThirdSpace Action Lab runs this Black-owned bookstore of new and used books by Black authors. A Toni Morrison collection and Black liberation literature are among its sections, and it stocks LGBTQ+ and children's titles as well. Groups and events can rent the space. It is closed Mondays.

Two sisters own The Browsing Room, which sells new and used books along with vintage and international titles. Its café pours Rising Star Coffee and serves light meals. The shop has hosted local authors and poetry readings, and it takes event bookings.

The Reading Room is a nonprofit used bookstore whose sales fund literacy and literary programs. Its shelves are arranged by themed journeys, with a focus on marginalized voices. It hosts events for writers and readers and opens Thursday through Saturday or by appointment.

Loganberry has been independently owned since 1994. It sits on Larchmere Boulevard at the Cleveland line, one block north of Shaker Square, and its well over 100,000 volumes are strong in modern first editions and in women's history and literature. Poets can read at Broadsides and Ephemera, the monthly open mic.

Mac's Backs fills three floors on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. Look for the local books and the signed copies. The store hosts author conversations and writing workshops, and a science fiction book club meets monthly.

Rising Star is a local roaster, and its Tremont café in the Tremont Place Lofts building keeps room in the back for quiet work and reading. It is open daily and closes mid-afternoon.

Rising Star's Hingetown café is inside the Ohio City Firehouse and stays open daily into the early evening.

Phoenix Coffee has roasted in Cleveland since 1990. Its Ohio City café is open daily.

Lekko, a living-wage coffee roaster, opened its original café in the bright former Foyer space of the Seymour Building. There is room for groups and for people working alone.

The museum's open-kitchen café serves soups, salads, and sandwiches in the same building as the Ingalls Library. For a longer meal, the 50-seat Provenance Restaurant offers a prix-fixe menu built around current exhibitions. Museum admission is free, and it is closed Mondays.

Music Box, in the Flats, has a supper-club room and a concert hall. Reserve a dinner table before the show.

The Music Settlement, a community music school, runs BOP STOP, where the bar and food menu come with views of Lake Erie. It hosts more than 300 concerts a year, jazz and blues among them. All ages are welcome.

Literary Cleveland is a nonprofit creative writing center for Northeast Ohio, with workshops in all genres and six-month intensives. Writers with low or limited incomes can take paid classes free through Word for Word Scholarships. It also publishes the online journal Gordon Square Review and runs free groups for immigrants, veterans, Black women, and queer and trans writers.

The Poetry Center has promoted poetry at Cleveland State since 1962. Its reading series brings about fifteen poets a year from across the country to read on campus.

The Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation presents this author series with Case Western Reserve University as its academic partner. Novelists and memoirists, new and established, come to Cleveland for evening events about their books. Proceeds support the county library.

The county library keeps a free writers' space in its South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch, open to writers of all ages and levels. Private writing rooms and laptops are free to use. Free workshops cover fiction, poetry, and memoir, along with marketing, and the center hosts a writer-in-residence.

Cleveland Book Fest is a month of author talks and publishing panels across Northeast Ohio, presented with partners that include Cleveland Public Library and Literary Cleveland. During the festival, Literary Cleveland holds Inkubator, a free day-long writing conference.

Case Western Reserve's humanities institute sponsors free public events each semester. Its calendar also includes the Cleveland Humanities Festival, a collaborative celebration of the city's cultural institutions.

Cleveland State's open repository makes the university's research, theses and dissertations included, free to read anywhere. It hosts journals as well.

Ohio Humanities has its office in Columbus. Spark Grants are among its grant programs. It also keeps a Speakers Bureau and publishes Lumen Magazine.

The Poetry Center has been a national nonprofit poetry press within Cleveland State's Department of English since 1971. It has published more than 150 titles, acquired through its first-book and open-book competitions. David Baker, Claudia Rankine, and Franz Wright are among its past authors.

The American Psychological Association's Journal of Family Psychology publishes research on family relationships from systems, developmental, cultural, and clinical-practice perspectives. Its editor is at Case Western Reserve University. Preparing an article for the Journal of Family Psychology

Cleveland poet and philanthropist Edith Anisfield Wolf established these awards in 1935, and the Cleveland Foundation presents them. The juried American prize goes to books that address racism and human diversity, in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and memoir. There is also a lifetime achievement award.

The Ohio Arts Council, a State of Ohio agency, gives these awards for outstanding accomplishments by Ohio artists. Discipline panels review them, and fiction, poetry, and screenwriting are among the writing disciplines.

The Cleveland Arts Prize began in 1960 and describes itself as the nation's oldest municipal arts award. It honors artistic excellence across disciplines and career stages. Literature is among the disciplines.

The Ohioana Library Association in Columbus has collected and promoted the works of Ohio authors since 1929. Its annual juried awards cover fiction, nonfiction, poetry, books about Ohio or an Ohioan, and books for young readers. Ohio writers 30 or younger without a published book can look at its Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant.

Literary Cleveland's residency is a free yearlong mentorship for emerging Northeast Ohio writers working on a debut book-length manuscript.

The Poetry Center acquires the poetry collections it publishes through two contests, a first-book competition and an open-book competition.

Editors For Students gathers grants and writing resources for Case Western Reserve students on this page.

A matching page covers Baldwin Wallace students.

The Morgan is a papermaking and book arts center. Its workshops cover papermaking, letterpress, and bookbinding, and on Thursday evenings the studio opens for letterpress or binding work. Admission is free. It is closed Sundays and Mondays.

Zygote is an open-door printmaking studio and gallery with its own archive. It teaches screen print, letterpress, and risograph in workshops and one-on-one sessions, and members get shop access.

Strong Bindery restores and repairs old books inside Loganberry Books.