A Writer's Guide to Kingston, Ontario

Central is KFPL's downtown branch. Study Rooms 1 and 2 are first-come, first-served; ask at the Service Desk. Individuals and organizations can rent a meeting room there.

Isabel Turner is the one KFPL branch where you can book a study room online, up to seven days ahead with an active library card. Bookings are capped at two hours a day.

Stauffer houses the Library's Humanities, Business, and Social Sciences department. Community members are welcome in its spaces, the Alan G. Green Fireplace Reading Room among them, and can get a free borrower card with ID. They can reach licensed e-resources only on library computers on campus.

Jordan's holdings include the Edith and Lorne Pierce Collection of Canadiana, a large body of Canadian history and literature, and run from early printed books to the personal libraries of significant authors. Visitors from outside Queen's are welcome. Send questions to jordan.library@queensu.ca.

The Archives hold Queen's institutional records, Queen's Quarterly and the Queen's Journal among them, along with private manuscripts and genealogy sources. Everyone is welcome. On a first visit you fill out a registration form, and questions go to archives@queensu.ca.

Novel Idea has sold new fiction and nonfiction since 1988. Look here for hard-to-find books by local authors and for literary periodicals. The store hosts readings.

Bookland is a locally owned west-end shop that buys and sells quality used books and carries new releases too. Ask, and it will order what the shelves lack.

CRAVE calls itself Kingston's largest independently owned coffee house, with a scratch bakery and a full kitchen. Outlets are scattered through the shop, and there is seating inside and out. Expect a crowd at exam time.

Coffee & Company has been open since 1995. The menu runs long on coffee and tea, with baked goods and sandwiches. The patio opens from April to October.

Balzac's is open daily in a restored heritage space. It is quiet. Take a counter stool or a window seat; the Wi-Fi needs no password, and four tables are laptop-free.

Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin' Spoonful and his partner, Rose Richardson, opened Chez Piggy in 1979. His daughter, Zoe Yanovsky, took over the restaurant and its sister bakery, Pan Chancho, in 2002. Dinner is served daily.

Juniper sits on the lower level of the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning, home to Theatre Kingston and the Kingston Arts Council, and it has a licensed waterfront patio. Laptop time is limited. At midday the tables are tech-free.

The Grad Club is a pub and restaurant in a heritage building on the Queen's campus. Its Ideas on Tap speaker series meets in the last week of each month from September to April, and non-members can book its rooms.

Kingston WritersFest puts on the city's festival for readers and writers. Its KWF Presents series adds author events outside the festival itself.

Queen's Department of English Literature and Creative Writing runs an annual series of readings by writers from across Canada, and its Page Lecture brings a Canadian writer to campus to talk about craft. A Writer in Residence comes for one term each academic year, a program Carolyn Smart started in 2006. Students in one seminar make the Lake Effect anthology and give a public reading.

Kingston's Poet Laureate serves four years, matching the term of City Council. The post honours poetry and literature in Kingston and recognizes local poets.

The Kingston Arts Council calls itself the region's primary resource for arts information and support. Writers can watch its opportunities board, and its newsletter comes out twice a month. The council also runs the City of Kingston Arts Fund.

Queen's faculty and students can host an open-access journal on Open Journals @ Queen's or deposit their work in the QSpace repository. The Library also helps with author rights and copyright. Queen's researchers can apply to its Scholarly Publication Fund for the costs of publishing a scholarly book.

Queen's faculty in the social sciences and humanities can apply for these SSHRC-funded internal grants. Explore grants cover project development and pilot work; Exchange grants support workshops and conference presentations. Research-creation is eligible.

McGill-Queen's is the joint university press of McGill and Queen's, with offices in Montreal and Kingston. It publishes across the humanities and social sciences, from history and philosophy to Indigenous studies, and it has a longstanding poetry series. The Kingston office shares the Douglas Library Building with Jordan Rare Books.

Wintergreen Studios is an off-grid retreat and education centre on 200 acres of woodland in South Frontenac. Its press has published more than twenty titles by emerging and established authors, from poetry and memoir to cookbooks. The centre also offers self-guided writing retreats.

The journal publishes research on the history of sexuality across periods and regions, along with book reviews. Ishita Pande, a professor of history at Queen's, edits it with Nicholas L. Syrett of the University of Kansas, and the editorial office is in Queen's Department of History. The University of Texas Press publishes it. Preparing an article for the Journal of the History of Sexuality

This grant helps Ontario residents with a recent professional publishing record complete new work for book-length publication. Eligible forms run from fiction and poetry to comics and young adult literature.

Published writers living in Ontario apply to designated publishers and literary organizations, which then recommend writers for OAC grants toward new writing.

This Canada Council component supports Canadian artists as they create and share new work. Support can start at the first idea and run to public presentation.

This grant is for professional artists in any discipline with an independent practice, working alone or with collaborators. It pays for research and experimentation toward new work.

Each year the City of Kingston and the Kingston Arts Council present Creator Awards to artists and artistic collectives. The Arts Champion Award honours someone who works for or supports the arts.

The Ontario government's book award recognizes excellence in Ontario writing in English and French across genres. Its poetry award is for a poet's first, second, or third book.

It gathers Queen's student funding and prizes along with campus writing support.

Scholars, authors, and artists from outside Queen's and outside Kingston can apply for a residency, normally one month, to do original research in the Archives' holdings. The fellowship helps with travel and living costs as well as research expenses.

Everlovin' Press is a letterpress printer and stationer whose custom work includes foil stamping and edge painting. It printed a broadsheet on handmade paper for Eric Folsom, a former Kingston poet laureate.

Allegra Kingston is one of the independently owned shops in the Allegra network. It binds booklets with saddle stitching and books with perfect binding, and does coil and wire-o as well.