A Writer's Guide to Durham and Chapel Hill: Libraries, Bookstores, Writing Groups, and Presses

The Main Library is home to the North Carolina Collection, which covers Durham history. Its meeting and study rooms can be booked.

The town library sits in Pritchard Park and is open seven days a week. It hosts author visits and other events. Holds can be picked up at any hour from lockers at University Place.

The Rubenstein holds Duke's special collections, among them the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture and the John Hope Franklin Research Center. Register as a researcher and request materials ahead of your day in the Reading Room.

Wilson Library houses UNC's Special Collections and the North Carolina Collection Gallery. Book a Research Room appointment; space is in demand. Register and send your requests two business days ahead, and bring ID on your first visit. If you are new to the collections or come from outside UNC, book a virtual consultation first.

Flyleaf sells new and used books and is open daily. Its event calendar stays full, from author readings to several book clubs.

Epilogue sells new and used books in downtown Chapel Hill and calls itself a living-wage bookstore. The coffee bar serves breakfast and fresh Mexican bread.

Golden Fig Books is a locally owned shop in Carr Mill Mall that sells both used and new books.

Letters stocks new books, with shelves that run from poetry and comics to North Carolina nonfiction. It hosts author events and book clubs, and it buys books from the public on Tuesdays. The store is closed Mondays.

Discover Durham calls the Regulator the oldest independent bookstore in the Triangle. It hosts readings and signings and is open daily.

Rofhiwa is a bookstore and café devoted to books by Black writers from around the world.

Open Eye serves coffee roasted steps away by Carrboro Coffee Roasters, and it pours wine and beer too. Graduate students have worked here for years. There are plenty of tables and outlets. It is open daily.

The Cocoa Cinnamon cafés are the retail shops of Little Waves Coffee Roasters. Axios named the Lakewood shop on Chapel Hill Road the most spacious of them, and its long rows of tables suit a day of work.

The Coffee Bar fills the Durham Hotel's two-story lobby and is open daily. It pours Counter Culture coffee, and the kitchen cooks from breakfast through dinner. Axios called the lobby, with its booths and tables, one of the city's favorite places to take a meeting.

The Fearrington Reading Room is a quiet study room on Wilson Library's third floor, open to the public. When you need a break, walk down to the exhibitions in the North Carolina Collection Gallery on the second floor.

Giorgios Hospitality runs the café inside Duke's Nasher Museum of Art, where admission is free. The museum is closed Mondays and stays open late on Thursdays.

Motorco is a live-music hall with its own restaurant, Parts & Labor, on site. Check the show calendar before you go.

Counting House is the restaurant inside 21c Museum Hotel, which mounts exhibitions of contemporary art. The menu leans toward seafood.

Poets read at Flyleaf's Second Sunday Poetry Series. The store also hosts a Silent Book Club and presents public humanities talks with Carolina Public Humanities.

Besides its author events, the Regulator runs two book clubs, its own and the Read the World Book Club. It also publishes the Redbird Reading List.

The Center for Documentary Studies offers continuing-education courses and puts on exhibitions and screenings. The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is one of its programs.

The Writers' Network is a statewide membership organization that holds conferences and competitions and offers a critique service. It also runs the Prison Writers Outreach Program and the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.

Duke's humanities institute works out of Smith Warehouse and hosts public events. Its series include Left of Black.

UNC-Chapel Hill faculty can apply to the institute for fellowships and for publication support and research grants. It also runs the Fellows Forum speaker series and leadership programs for department chairs and new faculty.

The National Humanities Center is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. It offers residential fellowships, and its library procures research materials for scholars. It also gives small grants and runs workshops for scholars and educators.

Carolina Public Humanities connects UNC-Chapel Hill faculty with communities across the state through public programs and the Great Books series. It also awards the E. Maynard Adams Fellowship in the Public Humanities.

North Carolina Humanities is a statewide nonprofit based in Charlotte. It gives grants and fellowships and runs North Carolina Reads.

Duke University Press is a not-for-profit scholarly publisher of books and journals, with open-access and digital projects as well. Its list covers the humanities and social sciences, and it publishes in mathematics too. Preparing a manuscript for Duke University Press

UNC Press publishes scholarly and general-interest books and journals. Southern history and culture is one of its strengths, along with African American studies and Native American and Indigenous studies. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is on its list. Preparing a manuscript for UNC Press

Carolina Academic Press publishes coursebooks and monographs, chiefly in law. Its authors are professors and practitioners. Preparing a manuscript for Carolina Academic Press

Algonquin Books was founded in Chapel Hill in 1983. It is now an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. Preparing a manuscript for Algonquin

Blair is a nonprofit press in Durham. It formed in 2018, when Carolina Wren Press acquired the John F. Blair, Publisher titles. Its fiction, nonfiction, and poetry center on the South and on authors mainstream publishing has often overlooked.

Bull City Press publishes chapbooks of poetry and prose, and now and then a full-length book. It also puts out Inch, a quarterly journal, and runs two reading series.

The National Association of Social Workers' journal publishes research that informs practice and policy. Its editor-in-chief, Lisa de Saxe Zerden, is at UNC-Chapel Hill. Preparing an article for Social Work

PTJ, the American Physical Therapy Association's journal, publishes new research on physical therapy and rehabilitation for clinicians and scientists. Editor in Chief Steven Z. George is at Duke University in Durham. Preparing an article for PTJ

The North Carolina Arts Council funds these project grants for individual artists, literary artists among them. Here the Durham Arts Council and the Orange County Arts Commission administer them with two neighboring agencies, for emerging and established artists living in Durham, Orange, Alamance, or Person County.

The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association presents these awards at its annual meeting. They recognize North Carolina writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature.

The Writers' Network runs this short fiction competition. The winning story appears in the North Carolina Literary Review.

This Writers' Network prize is open to African American and Black writers whose primary residence is in North Carolina. The winning work may be published in the North Carolina Literary Review.

Duke students can find grants and writing resources on this page.

The same guide, for UNC-Chapel Hill.

North Carolina Central University students in Durham have a page of their own.

Dave Wofford has run Horse & Buggy Press, a book design and production studio, since 1996. It designs fine press and trade books, memoirs among them, along with broadsides and posters, and offers publishing services. The space doubles as a gallery for artists and craftspeople.