A Writer's Guide to Huntsville, Texas

The city library is open Monday through Saturday. Its Cady and Wheat study rooms are booked through an online form, and the Staggs Community Room has a projector and a catering kitchen. Genealogy researchers can use HeritageQuest here.

Newton Gresham is SHSU's library on the Huntsville campus, and visitors may use its collections inside the building. To borrow, buy a Courtesy Card or bring a TexShare card. Guest Wi-Fi and visitor computer accounts are available, and the collections include children's literature and a Music Listening Room.

Special Collections keeps the library's unique books and manuscripts, county records, and archival material on the history of SHSU and the surrounding area. The general public may use them, in the library only, Monday through Friday or by appointment. Search the finding aids in ArchivesSpace first. Then call ahead.

SHSU runs the museum on a 15-acre complex. Researchers can contact the curator to schedule time in the archives of the Sam Houston Republic of Texas Presidential Library. The museum is closed Mondays, and the grounds are open daily.

Mortar & Pestle sells Texas books in a former pharmacy on the downtown square. Its shelves cover Texas culture, art and history, and the store pours Texas wines and sells local art alongside them.

Farmhouse has lounge seating. Reviews on its site call it quiet enough to study, and the space is divided so you can sit apart from the larger room.

The City of Huntsville runs this arts center in a house built in 1883, with exhibitions and arts classes. Individuals and nonprofit groups can rent space. Ask about it if your writing group needs a room.

Cafe Texan calls itself the oldest café in Texas. It is open daily for breakfast and lunch, and the building also holds a collection of antiquities and artifacts that visitors can see for free.

The Piney Woods Page Turners Book Club meets on the second Thursday of each month, and anyone interested is welcome. The Walker County Genealogy Society hosts the free Stories to Tell My Grandchildren Writing Circle at the library for people writing down family and local history. The library's program list also includes the Piney Woods Writers Group.

The Writers' League of Texas is based in Austin. It runs the Agents & Editors Conference and a Summer Writing Retreat, and its Texas Writes program brings free half-day writing workshops for adult writers to small community libraries across the state.

The Texas Institute of Letters is a nonprofit honor society, founded in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature. Members are elected for their literary accomplishments. It holds an annual gathering.

Founded in 1995, the Texas Book Festival is held each fall in downtown Austin, and Lit Crawl Austin is part of its program. Money raised during the festival weekend funds Texas Library Grants, which public libraries use to add print books, e-books and audiobooks.

Humanities Texas gives grants, Rural Grants and Mini-Grants among them, to help communities across Texas create local programs in history and culture. Social studies and English language arts teachers in Texas can attend its professional development programs.

The association is based in Austin and affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin. It has published the Southwestern Historical Quarterly since 1897, and its Handbook of Texas is free to read online. It also holds an annual meeting and offers awards and fellowships.

The State Archives in Austin hold manuscripts and historical maps as well as official Texas government records. Work in the reading room, or start from the finding aids on TARO and the Texas Digital Archive online. Paper local records are kept for on-site use at the commission's Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center in Liberty.

Texas Review Press, founded in 1979, is the university press of Sam Houston State University. It publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and scholarship. The Sabine Series publishes East Texas and Louisiana authors, and the Margaret Lea Houston Series publishes Texas women poets. TRP's books are distributed through the Texas Book Consortium with Texas A&M University Press.

Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice publishes empirical research on youth violence and juvenile justice for academics and practitioners, with an emphasis on justice process, policy and administration. Its editors, Eric Connolly and Peter Lehmann, are at Sam Houston State University. Preparing an article for Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice

This journal publishes research on crime, delinquency and justice, with a focus on treatment and rehabilitation. Its topics include violent crime and sexual offending, and it welcomes international and comparative studies. Editor-in-chief Bitna Kim and managing editor Sunhye Kang are at Sam Houston State University. Preparing an article for the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

The Texas Institute of Letters gives these awards each year for books and short work, in categories from fiction and poetry to translation and trade book design. Authors qualify if they were born in Texas or have lived there at least five consecutive years. Work whose subject substantially concerns Texas is eligible too.

The Institute's Jones Fellowship helps a working writer complete a work of fiction, poetry, or nonfiction for a general audience. Writers at any career stage are eligible if they have prior publication or workshop or mentorship experience.

The Austin-based Writers' League of Texas gives these annual awards to Texas authors, meaning anyone who has lived in the state at least three years. Traditionally and independently published books both qualify. Each category also has a Discovery Prize for books from independent presses, university presses, or self-publishing.

The League's yearlong fellowship is for emerging writers 18 and older who live in Texas. Fellows take a set of League classes tuition-free and register for the Agents Symposium, where each gets an agent consultation. The program is aimed at writers who need financial help, and writers from groups underrepresented in the literary community are especially encouraged to apply.

The University of Texas at Austin's Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies sponsors two residencies at J. Frank Dobie's Paisano ranch, southwest of Austin: the Ralph A. Johnston Memorial Fellowship in the fall and the Dobie Paisano Ranch Spring Writing Fellowship. Both are open to writers of any genre.

The Texas Legislature names a State Poet Laureate for a one-year term. The Texas Commission on the Arts, which runs the nominations, calls its State Artist designations the state's highest recognition for excellence in the arts. Any Texas citizen can nominate an artist, including themselves.

Our sister site gathers grants and writing resources for SHSU students on one page.

The UPS Store makes black-and-white and color copies and can coil-bind and laminate them. For bound drafts, it also does presentation printing and binding.