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

The New Orleans Public Library's central branch is closed Sundays. Its website links to the City Archives & Special Collections, and groups can ask for a meeting room under the library's meeting-room policy.

Tulane's main library is open to the public during the day. Evenings are for Tulane ID holders only. The library asks visitors to use their own school or public library first, and weekday parking on campus takes a permit or an hourly space.

Jones Hall holds the Louisiana Research Collection and the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, along with Tulane's architectural archives and rare books. Book a Jones Reading Room appointment online. Curators and archivists also take consultation requests by email.

The Amistad Research Center is an independent archive of African American history and culture. Its cornerstone collection is the American Missionary Association archives, and its library holds more than 33,000 books and pamphlets. It is open weekdays. Contact the research desk to plan a visit.

The Historic New Orleans Collection runs this research center for Louisiana and Gulf South history. Stop in, or browse the online catalog first. It is open Tuesday through Saturday.

Octavia Books is an independent general bookstore with a Local Authors section and another called Local Flavors - New Orleans and Beyond. Authors read and talk here regularly. There is a science fiction book club, too.

Garden District Book Shop hosts signings and author events, and its book club meets monthly. The shop also runs Bar Epilogue on site.

Faulkner House Books has specialized since 1988 in fine literature and in rare, signed, and out-of-print books, including books by and about William Faulkner. The shop sits just off Jackson Square, behind the Cabildo. It is open daily.

Blue Cypress sells new and secondhand books on Oak Street, signed new releases and UK editions among them. It runs book clubs and hosts events. The store is open daily.

Baldwin & Co. is a coffee shop and bookstore on Elysian Fields with a book club and a podcast studio. Its events are listed on Eventbrite.

Tubby & Coo's is a queer, liberationist bookshop that runs as pocket bookstores inside partner spaces. Genre fiction is a specialty, from science fiction and fantasy to horror and romance, and so are queer and diverse books. A second pocket shop is inside Mystic in Metairie.

The café inside Baldwin & Co. opens early, seven days a week. The space can also be rented.

Congregation's flagship café is open mornings into early afternoon and closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Axios named it one of the best coffee shops in New Orleans for remote work.

Satsuma calls itself a community-driven café, and Bon Appétit described it as laid-back and art-filled. The Dauphine Street café is open daily.

The Hotel Monteleone is an ALA National Literary Landmark, and its Literary Suites honor Welty, Capote, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Faulkner. The Carousel Bar has live music seven nights a week. Saints+Sinners meets in the same hotel each spring.

The Impastato family bought the 1797 Girod residence in 1914, and under Joe Impastato it became Napoleon House. Opera and classical music still play, a habit that started with his Victrola. It is open daily and takes no reservations.

Bar Epilogue pours literary-inspired cocktails and wine and serves small plates inside Garden District Book Shop. Stay after an author event.

The Historic New Orleans Collection runs this café in the Brulatour Courtyard of its free museum on Royal Street. The Williams Research Center is a block away.

The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival runs for five days in the French Quarter each spring, with panels and speakers. Other programs include the Fiction Sessions and a Virtual Writer's Retreat. Scholars have their own Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference.

Saints+Sinners is a three-day LGBTQ+ literary festival held each spring at the Hotel Monteleone, run as a program of the Tennessee Williams festival. Authors, publishers, and other literary professionals lead its craft sessions. There are readings and panels as well.

The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society is a literary and educational nonprofit, and Faulkner House Books is its bookstore partner. At Faulkner for All, its annual festival, writers can get manuscript critiques and advice sessions with New York agents and editors. The society also runs workshops and master classes for developing writers.

Each spring the New Orleans Poetry Festival holds readings and workshops in and around the New Orleans Healing Center. More than 60 presses take part in its small press fair. An international feature brings poets together with their translators.

Tulane hosts this free book festival on its uptown campus each spring. Writers and thinkers hold conversations and sign books, and one day is set aside for families. Authors can apply to take part, and recorded sessions from past festivals are online.

The Historic New Orleans Collection offers Woest Fellowships each year, funded research residencies for new scholarship on Louisiana and Gulf South history.

The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is a nonprofit that publishes 64 Parishes. Its grants go to nonprofits across Louisiana for humanities programs and projects. It also runs institutes for teachers.

A Studio in the Woods, a program of Tulane University's ByWater Institute, sits on 7.66 acres of protected bottomland hardwood forest. Its artistic residencies and scholarly retreats give artists and scholars time and space to work, with staff support. Visits are by invitation or appointment only.

LSU New Orleans Press is a nonprofit book publisher founded in 2003. It looks for literature drawn from New Orleans and the surrounding region, and for books that serve academic and general readers.

The Historic New Orleans Collection publishes books on the history, art, and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South. Its scholarly journal is the Tennessee Williams Annual Review. Members receive the HNOC Quarterly magazine.

The Journal of Nursing Management is a peer-reviewed Wiley journal publishing research on advances in nursing management and leadership. Its editor-in-chief, Justin Fontenot, is an associate professor in Tulane University's Program of Nursing. Preparing an article for the Journal of Nursing Management

The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society runs this annual competition for unpublished creative writing. Cash prizes go to nine categories, the novel and the nonfiction book among them.

The festival runs contests in four categories: one-act play, poetry, fiction, and very short fiction.

Saints+Sinners runs fiction, poetry, and very short fiction contests for LGBTQ+ writing. Winners and finalists in fiction and very short fiction appear in the festival's fiction anthology, and poetry winners and finalists in its chapbook.

Each year the Louisiana Center for the Book, in the State Library of Louisiana, gives this honor to a contemporary Louisiana writer. It recognizes a body of work and that writer's contributions to the state's literary and intellectual life.

The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association award this prize each year for excellence in research and writing on Louisiana history.

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

Loyola students have the same kind of guide from Editors For Students.

LSU New Orleans students have a guide of their own.

Graduate students traveling to do research at the Williams Research Center can apply for this award from The Historic New Orleans Collection.

Paper Machine is the printshop and book bindery of Antenna, a nonprofit arts organization. Writers can self-publish an original work here in a run of 20 to 500 copies, and the shop also takes community print jobs. A design computer and a scanner are free to use. Antenna publishes books and runs a bookstore, and its Antenna Press Artist Book Collection is in the same building as Paper Machine. Paper Machine is open Tuesday through Friday.