A Writer's Guide to Norwich

Norfolk's central public library is inside The Forum, and it also houses the Business and IP Centre. Log in with your library card for free Wi-Fi; registered members can use the public PCs, and you can print from your own device. Meeting rooms can be booked. It opens daily except bank holidays.

The Forum describes the Heritage Centre as the county's most comprehensive collection of published material on Norfolk and its people, and nearly all of its books, maps and newspapers are in the library catalogue. Find My Past and the British Newspaper Archive are free to use here. You can also consult the most-used Norfolk Record Office archives here. It closes on Sundays.

The American Library is a public library and a war memorial to the US 2nd Air Division, which was based in Norfolk during the Second World War. Its books and magazines cover American life and culture. The Roll of Honor and a permanent exhibition are on site, and the digital archive is online. It closes on Sundays.

The county archive produces original documents in the searchroom of the same building where they are stored. Visitors register as users. Access to documents is free, and self-service photography licences are available.

The Cathedral Library's historic collection reaches back to the 15th century and is for reference only. An annual subscription lets you borrow from the modern theology collection, and the reading room has study space. On Fridays a Listening Lunch reads aloud from a book in the collection, in the room and on Zoom. The library is usually open Tuesday to Thursday.

The Book Hive is a multi-award-winning independent bookshop that shelves its fiction, poetry and small press books without traditional sections. It publishes under its own imprint, Propolis Books. Its weekly quiet reading hour is called Page Against the Machine.

Bookbugs & Dragon Tales sells books for children and adults and will order any book in print, usually by the next day. It runs book clubs and classes, and its event space is for hire.

City Bookshop is a family-run shop with more than 30 years in the trade, selling new, second-hand and antiquarian books. Its local history shelves are strong on Norwich and the Broads. Upstairs, an exhibition room shows local memorabilia. It opens daily.

Tombland Bookshop sells antiquarian and second-hand books on most subjects, and it describes itself as the largest shop of its type in East Anglia. Ask about book-finding, restoration and rebinding. It opens Tuesday to Saturday.

Dormouse sells second-hand and antiquarian books on Elm Hill. Come for classic crime and Penguins.

The National Centre for Writing offers free, bookable desks to writers aged 18 and over in Dragon Hall, a Grade I-listed building. The small studio has four desks with Wi-Fi and headphones, and a shared workshop space seats six. Writers can use the garden too. Slots run three hours on Thursday mornings or afternoons, up to four a month. The room is running as a pilot.

Bread Source runs the Refectory on the site of the monks' original dining room, under the cathedral spire. There are plenty of tables. Expect some noise. It serves bread, pastries and light lunches daily.

This small Bread Source bakery has window seats and tables for one or two, looking out on the street. The room is warm and lively. It opens daily.

The Bridewell Alley branch keeps its seating apart from the ordering counter, which makes it quieter than most cafés and less busy than most Bread Source branches. It is fairly spacious and opens daily.

The Sainsbury Centre's restaurant serves morning pastries, soup and hot lunches, and its patisserie is made in-house. A second café, The Terrace, has seats indoors and out. Afterwards, walk the 350-acre sculpture park. The centre is closed on Mondays.

Thomas Ivory designed these Georgian assembly rooms in 1754. The Assembly House is now a restaurant and boutique hotel, serving breakfast daily as well as lunch and themed afternoon teas, and it hosts art exhibitions.

Prelude, on the ground floor of the Theatre Royal, serves a seasonal menu before each performance and takes reservations only. The theatre hosts touring productions.

The National Centre for Writing is a literature house in Dragon Hall, a medieval trading hall, working with writers and literary translators, young people and communities. The NCW Academy runs tutored online courses, workshops and mentoring. Its Writing Hub collects advice, and it makes The Writing Life podcast. NCW delivers the city's literary strategy as a UNESCO City of Literature.

The Forum Norwich, a charity, organises and runs this city-wide book festival, with the National Centre for Writing as lead sponsor. Author talks and readings share the programme with live drawing and children's events.

UEA Live is the University of East Anglia's literary festival. Its seasons bring ticketed talks with novelists, poets and historians, and it launches Norwich Book Festival with a joint event.

Norwich Arts Centre is a contemporary arts venue on St Benedict's Street. Its daily programme runs from live music and comedy to theatre, dance and literature.

UEA founded the British Centre for Literary Translation in 1989, and it describes itself as Britain's leading centre for the study and support of literary translation. It runs the literary translation Summer School and an Advanced Translation Workshop, along with residencies and fellowships. Its library holds works in more than 80 languages. It also hosts the Sebald Lecture.

The archive began in 2015 with Doris Lessing's diaries and correspondence. It now holds papers from Lee Child, J.D. Salinger and Naomi Alderman among other writers, and it is used to research the process of inspiration. Members of the public can visit by appointment only; book by email at archives@uea.ac.uk.

The Sainsbury Institute studies Japanese arts and cultures from the past to the present, with research that runs from archaeology to digital Japan. It offers research fellowships, including the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellowships. Researchers can use the Lisa Sainsbury Library, on Japanese art history and cultural heritage, free of charge.

Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar founded Galley Beggar Press in 2012, and it is based in Norwich. It publishes daring fiction and narrative non-fiction by writers who push at the boundaries of form and language. The list includes Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing and Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport.

Boiler House Press is a literary publisher based at the University of East Anglia. It publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction and work in between, and runs the Recovered Books and Beyond Criticism Editions series.

Strangers Press is the UEA Publishing Project's Norwich imprint for literature in translation. It issues translated work in themed series such as Keshiki and Yeoyu, working with UEA, Norwich University of the Arts and the National Centre for Writing.

Comparative American Studies, a Taylor & Francis journal, places American culture within an international comparative framework, chiefly through literature, film, popular culture and the visual arts. Its editors are at UEA's School of Art, Media and American Studies, and its North American editor is at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Preparing an article for Comparative American Studies

Project Grants is Arts Council England's open access programme for arts, libraries and museums projects. Individual practitioners can apply, as can community and cultural organisations.

Escalator gives unpublished, unagented fiction writers in the East of England eight months of mentoring with an established writer, along with Society of Authors membership and an industry showcase. NCW has run it since 2004. It particularly welcomes LGBTQI+ writers and writers from ethnic groups underrepresented on UK bookshelves.

The National Centre for Writing and the Eastern Daily Press run these annual awards, founded in 2008, for books and writers shaped by the East of England. Categories include fiction, poetry, and biography and memoir. One book is named Book of the Year.

NCW hosts writers and literary translators from the UK and abroad. Some stay in the Cottage on the Dragon Hall campus for between a week and a month, while others take part-time virtual residencies with commissions and online events. International residencies link Norwich with sister UNESCO Cities of Literature.

Low-income, early-career writers in England can receive a free professional manuscript assessment with feedback. NCW offers the scheme with The Literary Consultancy and Arts Council England.

Page Bros is a Norwich book printer whose heritage dates to 1746, and it takes small self-publishing projects as well as commercial titles. Short runs are printed digitally and larger ones by litho. It binds perfect bound softbacks and case bound hardbacks.

Norwich Printmaking Hub teaches letterpress and etching, among other processes. Members can book open-access studio sessions with technicians on hand. A Sunday Print Club for members meets once a month.