A Writer's Guide to Gainesville, Florida

Headquarters is the main library of the Alachua County Library District, and it is open daily. Book a study room for yourself or a meeting room for a writing group. The general collection holds almost 200,000 books and media, with more than 200,000 digital books and audiobooks on top of that.

Many Writers Alliance of Gainesville programs meet at Millhopper. Between programs, take one of its three study rooms or settle into the Quiet Reading Room. The branch is open daily.

Researchers use the Grand Reading Room, on Smathers Library's second floor, for the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature and the University Archives. The Latin American & Caribbean Collection has its own reading room on the third floor. Email special@uflib.ufl.edu at least five business days ahead and expect to fill out a registration form. Take notes in pencil. You can photograph most materials with your own camera.

Library West stays open late most nights. It holds the circulating collections of the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica and the Africana Collections. Late at night, entry is limited to holders of an active UF or Santa Fe College ID.

Novelist Lauren Groff and her husband, Clay Kallman, own The Lynx, which centers its shelves on books challenged or banned in Florida. There is a cafe and a study corner. The store hosts four or five events a week, from readings by Florida authors to visits by nationally known writers.

Book Gallery West sells new and used books, and it buys used books as well. Young readers get their own section. Gifts and cards fill out the stock, and the store is open daily.

Wormhole is a used bookstore and record shop. Its shelves also hold cassettes and CDs. Local authors give readings here, and poets perform.

Curia on the Drag serves coffee and tea every day. Seating is first come, indoors and out, with quiet corners for study and picnic tables outside. A vegan food truck and a vegan bakery are on site.

Opus roasts its own coffee and opens this café between UF and downtown every day. The company bills it as a place for a study session.

Daydreamer is on University Avenue, about five minutes from campus. The room is bright, with high ceilings and large tables.

Wyatt's is a downtown coffee shop with an open layout and plenty of light. The pace is calmer than at the shops near campus, and it is a good place to get work done.

108 Vine is a vintage gift shop with a craft espresso bar, open daily. The space is quiet and spare, with plants throughout. It also hosts ticketed craft workshops.

Satchel's serves pizza among junk art and mosaics, and you can eat in a vintage van or under a plane. Live music plays Tuesday through Saturday evenings, including a monthly songwriters' round and a monthly open mic. It is closed Sundays and Mondays.

Maude's has WiFi and limited seating inside and out. The Shut Up & Write! Gainesville group meets here for free, hour-long silent writing sessions, and any kind of writing is welcome.

The Writers Alliance of Gainesville is a nonprofit for aspiring and experienced writers, and most of its programs are free and open to the public. Members can join a critique pod, and newer writers can ask for a mentor. The Alliance publishes the Bacopa Literary Review each year and sponsors the Sunshine State Book Festival.

The Writers Alliance sponsors this free festival each year. Readers meet authors and buy signed books, and authors and subject experts give talks. Children get their own area for stories and activities.

Poet E. Stanley Richardson founded ARTSPEAKSgnv, which presents Bard & Broadside, North Central Florida's poetry festival. Its free events range from readings and writing workshops to open mics and slams. They take place around the city, at county library branches and the Harn Museum of Art among other venues.

UF's MFA program in creative writing holds public readings, including the student-run FBI series. Each year it brings editors and literary agents to campus for manuscript conferences with students. Past guests of its Writers Festival include Seamus Heaney and Marilynne Robinson. The department co-publishes the literary magazine Subtropics with the University of Florida Press.

The center supports interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and public engagement with it. Humanities faculty can apply for Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowships, and doctoral students for Tedder and Rothman Doctoral Fellowships. Organizers of humanities events can ask it for co-sponsorship funding.

LibraryPress@UF is the Smathers Libraries' open access publishing arm and an imprint of the University of Florida Press. It publishes monographs and edited collections, many tied to the Libraries' special collections or to Florida and the circum-Caribbean, along with open access journals. Authors can find guidance on proposals and copyright.

The Proctor program holds more than 10,000 interviews and sound recordings, centered on Florida and the Southeast. About 8,000 are public through UF Digital Collections. It offers oral history training and workshops, and it advises on permissions and on depositing interviews. Faculty and community partners can bring it research projects.

The center is a National Resource Center with more than 190 faculty experts on Latin America and the Caribbean. It runs a visiting and research scholars program and offers library travel grants. The editorial office of the Latin American Research Review is here.

Florida Humanities is a St. Petersburg nonprofit that receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its Public Humanities Program Grants and Book Festival Grants fund public programs. It also runs the Florida Center for the Book and publishes FORUM Magazine.

The press appears under two names, University of Florida Press and University Press of Florida, and describes itself as the scholarly publishing arm of the State University System of Florida. Its fields include archaeology and Latin American and Caribbean studies, and many titles cover Florida and the South. Its journals include Rhetoric of Health & Medicine. LibraryPress@UF is one of its imprints.

LARR publishes original research and review essays on Latin America and the Caribbean, including Latina/o studies, across the social sciences and humanities. Articles appear in English, Spanish or Portuguese. The Latin American Studies Association's journal is published by Cambridge University Press and edited at UF, where Editor in Chief Carmen Martínez Novo works and the Center for Latin American Studies hosts the editorial office. Preparing an article for the Latin American Research Review

G3 is the Genetics Society of America's open access journal for foundational research in genetics and genomics, especially work that produces useful genetic and genomic information. Oxford University Press publishes it. Editor-in-Chief Lauren McIntyre is a professor in UF's Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology. Preparing an article for G3

The Journal of the History of Biology publishes work on the history of the biological sciences across all periods, with attention to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to the philosophical and social issues biology faces. Its editors-in-chief are at UNSW Sydney and the University of Florida, and it is published by Springer. Preparing an article for Journal of the History of Biology

Florida State University Libraries coordinates the state's book awards in eleven categories, from poetry and general fiction to Spanish-language books and young adult literature. Authors must live in Florida full time. Three categories, Florida nonfiction among them, ask for a Florida subject instead.

The Writers Alliance's annual print journal awards a top prize and an honorable mention in each of five categories, from fiction to visual poetry. It takes submissions from writers worldwide. Alliance members are also eligible for a Best of WAG designation in each category.

The state arts agency funds Florida-based individual artists in every discipline through these project grants. Each project must have a public benefit, whether the grant goes to creating the work or presenting it.

Alachua County's Arts Council gives this grant to arts and cultural organizations and to municipalities in the county. Individual artists have been among the recipients.

This page gathers University of Florida fellowships and research awards, along with campus writing support.

Target Copy does digital printing and binds books, including custom bindings. It also produces books for authors who self-publish.

Alta Systems is a printing company that prepares files for press and prints books professionally. The county arts council lists it for bound books and self-publishing support.

Each academic year the Coffey Residency supports one artist, who researches UF's Special and Area Studies Collections and produces an editioned artists' book. The Zora Neale Hurston Papers are among the collections a resident might draw on. The resident consults with the curator of the Libraries' Book Arts Collection and can be based outside Gainesville.