A Writer's Guide to New Brunswick, New Jersey: Libraries, Bookstores, Writing Groups, and Presses

The public library's local history collections include digitized city directories and newspapers, along with Sanborn maps and oral histories. True-crime writers will want the Hall-Mills murder case collection. Meeting rooms can be booked, and the library is open Monday through Saturday.

Alexander Library is Rutgers–New Brunswick's main humanities and social sciences library. It has a Digital Humanities Lab and the Digital Learning Commons. Reserve study space through the libraries' Book a Space system.

Its collections center on New Jersey's social, cultural, economic and political life, and its divisions include the Sinclair New Jersey Collection and the Rare Book and Book Arts Collection. The public may visit by appointment only, Tuesdays through Thursdays.

Douglass Library is Rutgers' library for women's, gender, and sexuality studies, and it also houses the Performing Arts Library and the New Brunswick media collection of film and recordings. Sixteen lockable graduate carrels in the Mezzanine Graduate Reading Room go to eligible patrons for an academic year at a time.

Kennedy Library, in neighboring Piscataway, is part of the Piscataway Public Library. Its Local History Collection keeps scheduled open hours. Register before you go.

Labyrinth Books, on Nassau Street in Princeton, specializes in academic and rare books and also carries new releases and discounted titles. Some readings happen in the store, others at Princeton Public Library or on the Princeton University campus. It is open seven days a week.

Kate Lydon and Lauren King own The Cranford Bookstore, a general-interest shop in downtown Cranford that stocks children's and YA titles alongside fiction and nonfiction. Readers can settle into its reading nooks. The store hosts ticketed author events and weekend story time, and it closes Mondays.

Hidden Grounds opened in New Brunswick in 2013 and now has two cafés on Easton Avenue, at 4C and 106. The Daily Targum recommends it as a quieter place to study.

Semicolon is a daytime café on George Street that the Daily Targum praised for its space and ample seating.

The Art Library is in Voorhees Hall, which shares a 71 Hamilton Street address with the Zimmerli Art Museum. Its main-floor graduate reading room is open to any Rutgers graduate student or faculty member. Carrels go mainly to arts researchers, who ask the library staff for one.

Princeton Public Library has bookable study rooms and a first-floor Quiet Room with a large conference table. Upstairs, the literary-collection rooms have big work tables. The library is open daily, and it co-hosts author talks with Labyrinth Books.

Small World has served downtown Princeton since 1993 and has two cafés there. For solo work, the Daily Princetonian's study-spot guide points to the back tables and the granite counters along the wall. It gets loud. Bring headphones.

Tavern on George is a gastropub on George Street. The New Brunswick Jazz Project presents live jazz there every Tuesday and Thursday evening.

Stage Left is an evening steakhouse near the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, where George Street Playhouse and Crossroads Theatre Company perform. The menu of its sister restaurant, Catherine Lombardi, is served in the Stage Left dining room too.

TJ's is the lobby café in the Zimmerli, Rutgers' free-admission art museum. It opens on weekdays and closes for the summer.

Since 1990 the Writers at Rutgers Reading Series has brought fiction writers and poets to campus for free public readings, often with a Q&A and a signing. Most readings take place in the College Avenue Student Center Multipurpose Room. Natalie Diaz and Melissa Febos have read in the series.

The New Jersey Center for the Book is the state's affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book, and the Rutgers School of Communication and Information has hosted it since 2002. Its programs include Letters About Literature and Literary Landmarks. New Jersey authors and artists write and illustrate its Jersey Trackers e-book mystery series.

The New Jersey region of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is open to anyone in the state who writes or illustrates for children, published or not, from picture books through young adult novels. It helps members find critique groups. The Garden State Writers' Garden, a support and accountability meeting, gathers on Zoom on the third Thursday of each month.

Crossroads is a nonprofit theater that produces and presents works celebrating the African American experience and exploring diversity, culture, and social justice. Its seasons have featured work by Lynn Nottage and John Kani.

George Street Playhouse calls itself New Brunswick's oldest producing theater, and it states a commitment to new work. It performs in two theaters at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center.

The Center for Cultural Analysis is Rutgers–New Brunswick's interdisciplinary humanities center. Each year its research seminar gathers faculty, advanced graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and visiting scholars around one topic. It also supports faculty working groups such as Keywords and Art and Capitalism.

The Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis brings visiting senior and postdoctoral fellows to campus each year. They join Rutgers faculty and graduate students in a weekly seminar on a multi-year theme. A separate seminar and lecture series covers Black Atlantic History.

The Institute for Research on Women holds a weekly seminar for faculty and graduate students around an annual theme. It also publishes a book series and the online journal Rejoinder.

Rutgers University Libraries supports faculty under the Rutgers Open Access Policy through SOAR, its institutional repository. Librarians help authors negotiate publishing agreements and find open access journals that charge no article processing fees. There is also a list of publishers that offer Rutgers authors free or reduced fees.

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities, based in Camden, is the state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its Community History cohort program comes with project funding, and it gives the Katz Prize for excellence in public humanities.

Rutgers University Press publishes for a wide range of readers in fields from film and media studies to the history of medicine. New Jersey and the region is one of its subject areas. Preparing a manuscript for Rutgers University Press

Gorgias Press is an independent academic publisher in Piscataway that specializes in the history and religion of the Middle East and the larger pre-modern world. Its list includes biblical studies and Syriac and Eastern Christianity. South Asian studies is on the list too.

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts funds annual fellowships for practicing New Jersey artists, chosen through anonymous, competitive review and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts. Disciplines rotate from year to year, so check which ones are open before you apply.

The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards are annual prizes for single unpublished poems. Winning poems appear in the Paterson Literary Review.

The Paterson Poetry Prize goes each year to a book of poems of 48 pages or more. Publishers and authors may submit, and the winner gives a reading in Paterson.

Editors For Students keeps a guide to grants and writing resources for Rutgers University students.

The Scarlet Letterpress is a book lab and humanities makerspace with moveable type and hand-operated presses, plus equipment for making paper and ink. Students, faculty, staff and New Jersey residents can use it. No experience is needed, and training is provided. Drop-in open hours run Wednesday through Friday.

The Arts Council of Princeton, at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, lists printmaking among its classes. It also runs free monthly Sketch-In sessions.