A Writer's Guide to Indiana, Pennsylvania
Start at Indiana Free Library on Philadelphia Street, which runs several adult book clubs. At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where The Prison Journal is edited, the Special Collections room in Stapleton Library holds the Pennsylvania Regional History Collection. On Wayne Avenue, the Helman Library in the Armory keeps town and family histories. Novelists, poets, and IUP faculty finishing an article or a book all work from these same reading rooms.
Libraries · Places to Write · Places to Eat · Writing Community · Journal · Awards and Grants · When the Manuscript Is Ready
Libraries
Plan the week around the libraries' schedules. The Free Library closes Fridays and Sundays, and IUP's Special Collections sees researchers by appointment.
Indiana Free Library is the town's public library, and it stays open late on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Among its adult book clubs are a classics club and an American history club. Groups can reserve the Community Room by phone or through the website. The volunteer-run Little Read Bookstore sells used books and DVDs. Enter it by the 9th Street side door.
IUP's main library fills two connected buildings, Stapleton Library and Stabley Library. It keeps hours seven days a week, and some of its talks are free and open to the community.
Special Collections holds the Pennsylvania Regional History Collection, with coal-mining and Civil War materials and manuscript groups from unions and businesses. Its rare books include fore-edge paintings on volumes dating back to the 1500s. Visits are by appointment on weekdays. Use the request form or email the archivist to set one up.
The Historical & Genealogical Society of Indiana County runs this research library on the first floor of the Armory. Writers tracing a family or a town can start with its town and family histories and its surname files, which cover more than 26,000 names. There are subject files on Indiana County businesses and churches, too. Laptops are welcome. It opens Tuesday through Saturday, and non-members pay a small research fee.
Places to Write
Commonplace Coffee's flagship café is on Grant Street. IUP students stop in between classes or meet professors here, and regulars sit around a table and talk for hours. It opens every day, with seating indoors and out.
Places to Eat
H.B. Culpeppers has been a downtown bar and grill since 1981 and is now under second-generation ownership. It fills three levels of the 1915 Mrs. C.B.M. White Building. Live bands play here, The Clarks among them. It closes Sundays.
Writing Community
Literary Organizations
Bring a draft to the writing center at IUP. It serves the town of Indiana along with the university.
IUP's writing center has served the university and the Indiana community since 1969. Writers can book an appointment or walk in, wherever they are in a draft. Workshops run on Wednesdays.
Pennwriters is a writers' organization for Pennsylvania. Members can be matched with critique partners and join area meetings. The Penn Writer is the member publication. The organization also runs online courses and quarterly seminars, and its conference and writing contest come around once a year.
Penn State University Libraries hosts the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, which promotes reading and literacy across the state. Its Literary & Cultural Heritage Maps of Pennsylvania carry author biographies and feature articles. New and debut Pennsylvania authors get a spotlight on its site.
For Faculty and Researchers
Writing about Pennsylvania history? The State Archives residency is open to independent scholars and writers along with academics.
PA Humanities is an independent nonprofit, and it awards grants through an online portal. Its PA Cultural Exchange is an 18-month statewide fellowship for cultural practitioners. Poets can look at Rain Poetry, a community poetry project with grants of its own.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission funds short-term, full-time research residencies in the collections of the State Archives and State Library in Harrisburg. Writers and independent scholars researching Pennsylvania history are eligible along with academic scholars and graduate students.
A Journal Edited in Indiana
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We will ensure that the final draft you receive from us is completely ready to publish or submit. We work with you until it is ready or refund your payment in full.
The Prison Journal, a peer-reviewed SAGE journal begun by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, publishes work on adult and juvenile confinement and on alternative sanctions. It takes research notes and book reviews along with articles. Its editor is at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Preparing an article for The Prison Journal
Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
For Pennsylvania Writers
Running a small publishing or editing business? Start with the Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator.
The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts funds people who run an established for-profit creative micro-business in the state. Writers and editors qualify under its Publishing field, as do print and electronic publishers. Bridgeway Capital administers the program, and applications go through the Keystone Creatives website.
Penn State University Libraries sponsors this prize in honor of the artist Lynd Ward, and each spring it goes to the best graphic novel of the previous calendar year. Fiction and nonfiction both qualify. The author must be a living U.S. or Canadian citizen or resident.
The University of Pittsburgh Press gives this prize for literary short fiction and publishes the winning collection. To enter, a writer needs at least three published short stories or novellas, a book-length collection of fiction, or a novel. Judges read the manuscripts anonymously.
Since 1981 the University of Pittsburgh Press has given this prize for a poet's first full-length book. The winner appears in the Pitt Poetry Series.
When the Manuscript Is Ready
Off the Grid Editing has edited books and scholarship since 2002.
Publishing Scholarship
For a monograph, an edited collection, or a revised dissertation headed to a university press: dissertation to book editing, our guides to academic press requirements, English language editing for researchers, and journal article editing.
Publishing Fiction, Memoir, and Poetry
For a novel, a story collection, a memoir, or a book of poems: fiction and creative nonfiction editing, memoir and biography editing, developmental editing, and our guides to trade and literary publishers.
Every manuscript can also go through copy editing, line editing, or proofreading. The book editing services page compares all four levels.
- Condensing 200 Pages Into 25: Strategies for Extracting a Journal Article from a Dissertation
- Writing for the Peer Reviewer: Anticipating and Addressing Methodological Criticisms
- Tracking Source Material: Best Practices for Archival Citations in History and Humanities
- The Art of the Academic Abstract
- The Solitary Scholar: Building a Sustainable, Focused Writing Routine
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Off the Grid Editing. Places and links checked November 2026.
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