A Writer's Guide to Orlando
Jack Kerouac's old cottage in College Park houses six writers a year through the Kerouac Project. Eatonville honors Zora Neale Hurston, its hometown writer, with the annual ZORA! Festival, and The Florida Review at UCF gives annual prizes for new writing. Start at Orlando Public Library on Central Boulevard, then find a bookstore in Audubon Park or Parramore. Novelists and poets end up at the same tables as UCF faculty finishing an article or a book.
Libraries · Bookstores · Places to Write · Places to Eat · Writing Community · Journal · Awards and Grants · When the Manuscript Is Ready
Libraries
Book rooms downtown through OCLS room reservations. For UCF's Special Collections, request materials three working days before you go.
Orlando Public Library, the Orange County Library System's downtown library, is open daily. Five of its six study rooms seat up to six people; the sixth seats twelve. Meeting rooms run from 25 to 100 seats.
The Melrose Center takes up 26,000 square feet on the main library's second floor, with audio, video, and photo studios. Writers recording an audiobook or a podcast can book its booths through OCLS. Subject experts teach classes and lead meetups here.
Readers from outside UCF can get a Special Borrowers card at the Hitt Library, either by purchase or on proof of affiliation. Checkout requires a government photo ID.
Special Collections' holdings run from book arts and typography to Floridiana and the West Indies. The public can visit by appointment, Monday through Thursday. Plan ahead.
Rollins College's library is about five miles north of downtown Orlando. Visitors without a Rollins card show ID and sign in at the Circulation Desk to use the books and research databases in the building. UCF students and faculty can register as reciprocal borrowers, and Archives & Special Collections welcomes researchers working on Central Florida history.
Independent Bookstores
Check each store's calendar before you go. Most of them host signings or author panels.
The New Romantics sells only romance, from romantasy and historical novels to LGBTQIA+ and YA, and sorts much of its stock by trope. Authors come in for signings and release parties.
At Authentic Books you pick a book and fill a tote or box with three paired items, such as a candle or chocolate. Authors hold signings here. The store also runs workshops and murder-mystery nights, and it is closed Monday through Wednesday.
Spiral Circle stocks metaphysical and spiritual titles alongside tarot and crystals. Classes and meditation meet in its community room and courtyard. Earthgrounds Coffee + Matcha operates on site, and the store is open daily.
The Story Room Collective sells fantasy, sci-fi, and romance and makes shelf space for independent authors. Book club nights and release parties fill its calendar. It shares Goblin Studios with Van Goghblin Café. The store is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Writer's Block is a full-service independent bookstore on Park Avenue, open daily, with new books in every genre, children's and YA titles among them. Four book clubs meet in the store, from fiction to romance, and author events happen in person and online. The store is a partner in the Florida Children's Book Festival.
Blackbird is a comics shop and coffeehouse that has won the Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award. It sells graphic novels and manga next to novels, and its book club comes by monthly subscription.
Places to Write
Foxtail is half a mile east of Orlando Public Library on Central Boulevard, so a morning in the stacks can turn into an afternoon of drafting.
Foxtail has free, fast Wi-Fi and plenty of room indoors and on the patio. It is open daily.
Lineage's Mills 50 café on Colonial Drive is open every day from early morning into the evening.
Lineage also pours inside East End Market, the two-story market on Corrine Drive, and the café is open daily. When the draft stalls, The New Romantics is down the block.
Lineage's University Boulevard café is near the UCF campus and the Hitt Library, and it opens every day from early morning into the evening.
Places to Eat
Check the Bynx calendar for open mics and spoken word nights before you plan an evening downtown.
Bynx is a café with a recording studio and a Collectors' Corner of modern first editions and zines. Open mics and spoken word nights share the calendar with live music and a book club. It stays open every day into the evening.
Enzian is a nonprofit, single-screen independent cinema and the home of the Florida Film Festival. Eden Bar, its outdoor garden restaurant under old oaks, makes much of its food in-house and is open daily.
Van Goghblin is the café and art gallery inside Goblin Studios, a women-owned fabrication studio, and The Story Room Collective is in the same building. The café runs art and craft classes. It is open daily.
Writing Community
Literary Organizations
Watch the Kerouac Project's site for residents' readings at the house, and plan a trip to Eatonville for the ZORA! Festival.
Jack Kerouac lived in this College Park cottage in 1957 and 1958. Each year the Kerouac Project houses six writers there. Residents host creative writing workshops and close their stays with a reading at the house.
The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community holds this annual festival in Zora Neale Hurston's hometown, one of the oldest incorporated Black townships in the United States. A conference of papers and panels meets in Historic Eatonville, and talks take up her books. Each year's Official Guide collects essays and photography.
Look in the Florida Writers Association's directory of local writers groups for one that meets near you. The association also runs virtual write-ins and the annual Florida WritersCon conference.
Orlando Family Stage and Writer's Block Bookstore present this statewide festival of children's and young adult books, first held in 2026. Authors read and sign books, and theatre adaptations of children's books share the program.
For Faculty and Researchers
Florida Humanities is a St. Petersburg nonprofit funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. It supports public programs through Public Humanities Program Grants and Book Festival Grants, and its FORUM magazine writes about Florida's people and places.
A Journal Edited in Orlando
Our Promise
We will ensure that the final draft you receive from us is completely ready to publish or submit. We work with you until it is ready or refund your payment in full.
Read the author guidelines on the AACN journals site before you format the manuscript.
Critical Care Nurse, the bimonthly clinical practice journal of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, publishes evidence-based work on the bedside care of critically and acutely ill patients. Its editor-in-chief is on the faculty of UCF's College of Nursing. Preparing an article for Critical Care Nurse
Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
For Florida Writers
Read the residency rules first. The United Arts awards cover only four Central Florida counties, and the Kerouac residency takes applicants from outside the country.
Florida State University Libraries coordinates the state's book awards in eleven categories, poetry and Spanish-language books among them. Authors must live in Florida full time. The exceptions are Florida nonfiction, visual arts, and cooking, where the book needs a Florida subject.
The state arts agency gives project grants to Florida-based individual artists in any discipline. Artists enrolled in a degree or certificate program cannot apply.
United Arts funds professional artists, historians, and scientists who live and work in Lake, Orange, Osceola, or Seminole County. An award can pay for a single project or for supplies and professional development.
UCF's literary magazine gives its Editor's Prizes each year in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Entries go in without the writer's name, and winners are published in The Florida Review. The magazine also runs the Leiby Chapbook Award.
Poets, fiction and creative nonfiction writers, playwrights, and screenwriters can apply. Residents live rent-free in the house, with utilities covered and a grocery stipend.
For Students and Researchers
UCF and Rollins students can find scholarships and research funding on our sister site, Editors For Students.
This page lists scholarships, writing prizes, and writing resources at UCF.
Editors For Students keeps the same kind of guide for Rollins College students in Winter Park.
When the Manuscript Is Ready
Off the Grid Editing has edited books and scholarship since 2002.
Publishing Scholarship
For a monograph, an edited collection, or a revised dissertation headed to a university press: dissertation to book editing, our guides to academic press requirements, English language editing for researchers, and journal article editing.
Publishing Fiction, Memoir, and Poetry
For a novel, a story collection, a memoir, or a book of poems: fiction and creative nonfiction editing, memoir and biography editing, developmental editing, and our guides to trade and literary publishers.
Every manuscript can also go through copy editing, line editing, or proofreading. The book editing services page compares all four levels.
- Presenting Outcomes Data in DNP Manuscripts
- Translating Evidence Into Practice: Writing the Synthesis of Evidence for Clinical Projects
- Writing for the Peer Reviewer: Anticipating and Addressing Methodological Criticisms
- Tracking Source Material: Best Practices for Archival Citations in History and Humanities
- The "Ugly First Draft": Reducing Performance Anxiety
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Off the Grid Editing. Places and links checked November 2026.
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