A Writer's Guide to Ithaca, New York

The county library is downtown on East Green Street. Its six study rooms seat two to twelve people on a first-come, first-served basis, and there are public meeting rooms too. On Poem in Your Pocket Day the library has handed out pocket-sized cards of poems by more than fifty local poets. It has also run creative writing workshops for teens.

Olin Library serves humanities and social sciences researchers across Cornell, and anyone may come in and use its books and databases on site. Visitors get online through Cornell-Visitor Wi-Fi. To borrow, non-Cornell users go through Library Public Services, where eligibility rules and fees apply. The Map Collection and the US government documents are in Olin. So is the Amit Bhatia Libe Cafe.

The division holds more than 500,000 printed volumes and 80 million manuscripts, and its collection highlights include literature and theater as well as American history and culture. The reading room is open to anyone by appointment. Register online and request items about two weeks ahead; many are stored offsite. Bring photo ID, and expect up to five items per appointment slot. The division's site also lists funding for research.

The History Center looks after local history collections and runs an exhibit hall on the Commons. Search its archive catalog online first, then write to the archivist at archives@thehistorycenter.net to book a visit.

Buffalo Street Books is a nonprofit bookstore with a membership program. It keeps a section of Ithaca-area authors and armchairs for browsing. Launches and readings come up often, including Cornell's MFA First-Year Reading Series. Book clubs meet here too.

Odyssey is a small independent shop on the lower level at 115 West Green Street. Its Ithaca Connections section features writers who spent formative years in town, and local authors can ask about consignment. Book clubs meet here. So do group long reads.

Autumn Leaves opened as a used bookstore in 1993 and sits on the Commons. PM Press, a radical publisher, bought the store in 2023 and gave its own titles a section. Down in the basement, the shelves run to religion, plays and history, and one wall holds classics. Its author events have been free. Angry Mom Records is upstairs.

The library's Friends group holds a large used-book sale twice a year, in May and October, in the warehouse-sized Regina C. Lennox Building. Books are sorted by genre. A Collector's Corner of rare books and first editions opens only during the sales.

The Cayuga Street café is the original Gimme! Coffee, run by Ithaca's worker-owned roaster, and it has served coffee here since 2000. Bring a laptop. There is Wi-Fi.

Gimme!'s café at the west end of downtown is open daily, with Wi-Fi and plenty of outlets for a laptop.

Ithaca Coffee Company has roasted coffee since 1984, and in 2025 it opened this café in the front of its roasting facility. A bakery shares the building. A study-spot directory lists ample seating and fast Wi-Fi.

The A.D. White Library is a 19th-century reading room inside Uris Library, with comfortable seating and Wi-Fi, and visitors may work here. For wheelchair access, enter the building by the McGraw clock tower.

Alley Cat serves coffee and sandwiches. Laptops are allowed, and there is Wi-Fi. A separate room holds adoptable cats from Browncoat Cat Rescue, and the café recommends reserving it on weekends.

Moosewood opened in 1973 as a mostly vegetarian restaurant run by a worker collective. The Moosewood Cookbook came out of this kitchen, followed by a long series of cookbooks the collective wrote together, and the collective's manuscript archive went to Cornell in 2010. Buffalo Street Books is in the same building. Moosewood serves weekend brunch and is closed Tuesdays.

Temple of Zeus is the College of Arts and Sciences café in Klarman Hall. It began in Goldwin Smith Hall in 1964 as a place for students to meet faculty, and it takes its name from plaster casts of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia; some of those casts stand in the 170-seat Klarman atrium today. A former Moosewood employee made it a soup-and-sandwich spot in 1993. It is open weekdays.

The Nocturnal Café is an espresso and tea bar that opens in the evening and is closed Sundays.

Community Arts Partnership runs Spring Writes, a free annual festival of readings and panels with writers from Tompkins County and beyond. Live events take place downtown at venues such as Buffalo Street Books and the public library, and Zoom events and summer workshops follow. Writers apply to take part through SpringWrites.org. CAP also runs the Poet Laureate of Tompkins County program from its office in the same building as the History Center.

Cornell's Creative Writing Program brings several writers to campus each semester for this series, from debut authors to internationally known ones. Readings are free and open to the public, with a signing and reception after. They take place in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, in the same building as Temple of Zeus. The Zalaznick endowment also supports memorial readings such as the Eamon McEneaney reading.

Ithaca College's Department of Writing runs this series. Each visiting writer gives a public reading in Klingenstein Lounge and teaches an advanced class for students in the Visiting Writers Workshop.

Ithaca City of Asylum gives refuge to writers and artists facing censorship or threats. Volunteers run it as a project of the Center for Transformative Action, and it belongs to the International Cities of Refuge Network. Each resident receives about two years of support, and the group helps writers' families settle in as well. It also hosts public conversations with writers.

The Society for the Humanities is Cornell's humanities institute, and each year it gathers fellows and Cornell faculty around a new focal theme. Scholars and artists with a Ph.D. can apply for a year-long residential fellowship that includes teaching a small seminar. Faculty Fellowships give Cornell tenure-track faculty a year of leave from their departments, with offices in the A.D. White House. The Society also runs writing groups.

eCommons is Cornell University Library's digital repository. It offers long-term access to Cornell-related written work and datasets, along with images and software.

Humanities New York has funded and partnered with organizations across the state for fifty years. Its programs include Community Conversations and the Humanities Unbound reading-and-discussion programs.

Cornell University Press was founded in 1869 and publishes peer-reviewed nonfiction. Its list runs from history and political science to literary and cultural studies, with New York State history as a standing subject. ILR Press covers labor and the workplace, and Comstock Publishing Associates takes natural history and nature writing. Three Hills publishes general-interest books on New York State and City, along with fiction and other creative writing.

New German Critique publishes interdisciplinary work on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German studies, from literature and film to political and social theory. Its editors are Paul Fleming of Cornell and Brad Prager of the University of Missouri, and the editorial office is in Cornell's Department of German Studies in Goldwin Smith Hall. Duke University Press publishes it. Preparing an article for New German Critique

The New York Foundation for the Arts runs these unrestricted fellowships with support from the New York State Council on the Arts. They go to originating artists who live in New York State or in a Tribal Nation within it, and applicants cannot be enrolled in a degree program. Disciplines rotate on a three-year cycle. Poetry and nonfiction literature share one year, fiction comes the next, then playwriting and screenwriting.

This NYSCA program funds new work that New York State artists start themselves, at any stage of a career, and Literature is one of its disciplines. You apply through a New York State nonprofit, which receives the grant on your behalf.

The Saltonstall Foundation runs juried summer residencies, with stipends, at its arts colony in Ithaca. Poets and fiction writers who live year-round in New York State or in the Indian Nations within it can apply, and there is no application fee. Short residencies are set aside for artist and writer parents and caregivers. In the off-season, writers from across the state can apply for apartment and studio space.

Community Arts Partnership's Strategic Opportunity Stipend goes to full-time Tompkins County residents with a consistent record of making art, toward a specific opportunity that could advance their careers. Its Grants for Arts Programs fund public events, literary events among them.

This page collects grants and writing resources for Cornell University students and researchers.

The Ink Shop is a nonprofit printmaking studio on the second floor of the CSMA Building, with etching and lithography equipment as well as letterpress. Members get studio access. The shop teaches printmaking and bookmaking workshops, and its gallery shows prints and artists' books.

This franchise copy and print shop in Collegetown does coil binding and other document finishing.