A Writer's Guide to Dublin

Central Library, in the ILAC Centre, has study spaces and Wi-Fi, and you can book its work pod or its soundproofed recording studio. The Music Library and the Local History Collection are here as well. Lectures and book clubs run through the year. It stays open late Monday to Thursday and closes on Sundays.

Pearse Street Library has open study space that needs no library card. It shares the building with the Dublin City Library and Archive Reading Room, which holds special collections and local studies material. The Reading Room works by appointment only. Email to request up to five items and wait for confirmation, then bring photo ID for the research card issued on arrival. The library closes on Sundays.

Books, serials and newspapers are read in the Main Reading Room, and manuscripts and rare books in the Manuscripts Reading Room; there is a Microfilm Reading Room too. Everything must be pre-ordered online, and every reading room needs a Reader's Card. The rooms open on weekdays and on set Saturdays. The Yeats exhibition is in the Kildare Street building, while Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again is at the Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre.

While the Old Library is redeveloped, Trinity's manuscripts, archives and early printed books are read in the Interim Research Collections Study Centre on level -2 of the Ussher Library. Readers from outside Trinity contact the library first and then apply for a Library Visiting Reader card. Book manuscript and archive appointments at least a week ahead. Most collections are stored offsite, so allow several days for delivery.

Marsh's Library was founded in 1707 and calls itself Dublin's oldest public library. It is one of the few 18th-century libraries left anywhere. Researchers can use the collections by appointment, and the exhibitions change through the year. It opens Tuesday to Saturday.

Books Upstairs opened in 1978 and calls itself Dublin's oldest independent bookshop. Poetry is a strength. The shop has long stocked literary and political journals, so browse them here if you are deciding where to send a story. A secondhand section came in 2019, and there is a café and a programme of literary events.

The Gutter is an independent shop with Irish-interest and Read With Pride sections, and it hosts readings and book clubs. It opens daily. A second branch is in Dalkey.

Ulysses Rare Books specialises in Irish literature and first editions, Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and Yeats among them. It also stocks poetry and books in Irish. The shop is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association and opens Monday to Saturday, on the same street as Davy Byrne's.

Chapters bills itself as Ireland's largest independent bookshop. New, bargain and secondhand books share one roof, and you can trade in your used books. It opens daily.

The Company of Books is a 100% Irish-owned neighbourhood shop in Ranelagh, open since 2009. It sells fiction, non-fiction and children's books and runs a monthly book club. Ask, and the shop will order what it doesn't have. It opens Monday to Saturday.

The Secret Bookstore is an independent shop whose many shelves include Irish interest and poetry. It opens daily and stays open late on Thursdays.

The Fumbally is a spacious café with plenty of natural light. Its sister space, The Fumbally Stables, holds a no-frills Friday dinner and workshops. The café opens Tuesday to Sunday.

Brother Hubbard North is larger inside than it looks, with plenty of seats and Wi-Fi. Charge your laptop before you come, because there are no sockets. It opens seven days a week.

Third Space is a social-enterprise café in Smithfield Markets, serving the area since 2012, with sockets and Wi-Fi. Community groups use the room outside business hours. It closes on Sundays.

The Winding Stair takes its name from the Yeats poem, and in the 1970s and 1980s writers and artists met here. Since 2006 the upstairs has been a restaurant cooking with seasonal Irish produce. The ground-floor bookshop keeps many of its original shelves.

Bewley's is the Grafton Street café linked with Joyce, Yeats and Beckett. Harry Clarke is among the artists behind its stained glass. Bewley's Café Theatre is based here, and the café opens daily.

Davy Byrne's is the pub in the Lestrygonians chapter of Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom has a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy. Flann O'Brien, Kavanagh and Behan drank here later. The Davy Byrnes Short Story Award carries its name, and Anne Enright and Claire Keegan have both won it. It opens daily.

The Commons Café is inside the Museum of Literature Ireland, in the old student dining halls of UCD's Newman House, and it cooks with Irish produce. Take your book out to the courtyard and Readers Garden afterward. A 200-year-old tree stands at its centre.

The Irish Writers Centre works with writers at every stage from all over the island, through courses and masterclasses held online and in person. Its Academy also covers the Evolution Programme, one-to-one mentoring and residencies. Members get course discounts. The website's resources include journal submission listings and advice on funding.

Poetry Ireland is the all-island resource organisation for poetry, and it publishes Poetry Ireland Review. Its house at 11 Parnell Square East is a venue for poetry events. Watch its opportunities listings for competitions, calls for submissions, residencies and open mics.

MoLI is a museum of Irish writing in Newman House, and its rare manuscripts include Copy No. 1 of Ulysses. Check its events listings for exhibition launches and evenings. The museum shop sells Irish books and poetry, and you can go in without a ticket.

The City of Literature office is a Dublin City Council initiative managed by Dublin City Libraries, and One Dublin One Book has its home on the site. Check the listings for literary events and calls. Residencies run with other UNESCO Cities of Literature appear there too.

Dublin Book Festival takes place each November in and around the city. Besides the main programme it has family and schools events and a strand called DBF After Dark. Some of the content is in Irish.

The Long Room Hub is Trinity College Dublin's arts and humanities research institute, and it runs a visiting research fellowship programme. Its public events include lectures and the Behind the Headlines series.

University College Dublin's Humanities Institute hosts resident scholars and runs a visiting residency programme. It also holds a lunchtime seminar series and conferences. Each year there is a distinguished guest lecture.

The Royal Irish Academy is an all-island learned society, established in 1785. Its research library holds manuscripts, books, pamphlets and drawings. The Academy publishes journals such as Ériu and the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, and it runs research programmes including the Dictionary of Irish Biography. Look at its grants pages for research bursaries.

The Lilliput Press is an independent publisher of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and illustrated books, and it keeps a line of rare and limited editions printed in small runs. Its office and bookshop are in Stoneybatter. The shop opens on weekdays.

The poet John F. Deane founded Dedalus Press in 1985. It publishes contemporary Irish poetry and poetry from around the world in translation, along with multi-author anthologies. The press has a Dublin postal address and no public office.

Four Courts Press is an academic book publisher. Its list runs from modern history and theology to Celtic and medieval studies, archaeology and law. Its catalogue also carries titles from NUI Publications and the Folklore of Ireland Council.

The Journal of Social Work Practice publishes psychodynamic and systemic perspectives on social work and relationship-based practice, drawing on research, theory and practice experience from the UK and internationally. It has two co-editors, and one of them is at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in Dublin. Preparing an article for Journal of Social Work Practice

The Arts Council's Literature Bursary Award is for professional writers, comic book artists and children's picture book makers who work mainly in English. It gives them time to think, research and write, usually by covering financial commitments for a set period. Track record weighs most in assessment. Promise and potential count too.

Dublin City Council gives these bursaries to professional artists living in its administrative area, in any artform the Arts Office supports. They can pay for mentoring, research, residencies or studio rental. Undergraduates cannot apply.

The Irish Writers Centre runs this programme with funding from the Arts Council, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and regional partners. It pairs writers over 18 who live on the island of Ireland with a professional writer-mentor, in fiction, creative non-fiction, children's and YA fiction, or poetry. Writer and mentor meet three times over about eight months, and the mentor reads the work in advance. Published writers starting a new form can apply. Anyone in full-time education cannot.

Unpublished novelists anywhere in the world can enter this Irish Writers Centre competition with 5,000 words of the manuscript and a synopsis. Winners learn to craft a pitch at a prep day, then pitch their novels to publishers and literary agents over Pitch Days, in person or online.

Dublin City Council sponsors this annual international prize for a single novel written in or translated into English, and Dublin City Libraries administers it. Libraries in cities around the world nominate the titles. When a translation wins, author and translator share the prize.

Black Church is an artist collective with a printmaking studio in Temple Bar. For a chapbook or a zine, look at its bookbinding workshops; it also teaches screenprinting, etching and lithography. Keyholder members have access around the clock, and non-members can arrange access too.

Copyprint has served Dublin since 1982, a few minutes from Trinity. It binds theses in soft or hard covers to the specifications of Trinity, UCD and DCU.