A Writer's Guide to Perth

The State Library is a research, reference and lending library, open daily. Its J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History, on Level 3, holds WA-published books and newspapers, private archives, photographs, oral histories and maps. Rare items and State Archives are read in the Leah Jane Cohen Reading Room, which needs full membership. Only pencils are allowed.

The City of Perth Library opened in 2016 near Perth Town Hall and runs to seven levels. It has study rooms and an auditorium, and groups can book meeting rooms such as Room 202, a 12-person boardroom overlooking Cathedral Square. Book clubs can borrow free book-club sets. It opens daily except public holidays.

Fremantle Library is on the lower ground floor of the Walyalup Civic Centre and opens daily. Its Fremantle History Centre keeps local material on Fremantle and East Fremantle. Meeting rooms can be hired.

Community visitors can use Reid Library's spaces free during opening hours, though borrowing needs a paid community membership. Special Collections holds Australian literature to 1980. The Peter Cowan Collection is here, and so are the William Grono Collection of WA poetry and Arthur W. Upfield's manuscript papers.

New Edition is an independent bookshop on the corner of High and Henry streets in Fremantle, open late seven days. It hosts author conversations and takes part in the Totally Lit festival. Crow Books is its sister shop.

Crow Books is on Albany Highway and opens seven days. Staff recommend titles, and the shop hosts author signings.

The Lane is a Claremont bookshop with an active author-event program. Its in-store book clubs include Susan Midalia's Book Club and a non-fiction club. The shop publishes its own magazine, Lane Ideas, and opens daily.

Paper Bird is a specialist children's bookshop and arts centre with a strong selection of Indigenous Australian children's books. It runs launches, story time, Story Lab and book clubs. Illustrators can enter its illustration award, which comes with an exhibition.

Elizabeth's sells used, out-of-print and discounted new books from shops on Hay Street in the city and South Terrace in Fremantle. Look here for Australiana. It stocks antiquarian and collectable titles as well.

Diabolik Books & Records sells books and records in Mount Hawthorn. It opens seven days.

Planet Books calls itself a non-conforming bookshop. Its strengths are science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels and humour, and it sells notebooks, games and stationery alongside the books.

Centre for Stories rents hot desks in three-hour sessions, morning or afternoon. The centre also has a quiet Reading Room and a free lending library of more than 3,000 volumes.

FLUX is a coworking space with hot desks by the day, dedicated desks and meeting rooms. Spacecubed runs two more sites in the CBD, Fern at Allendale Square and Riff.

Mary Street Bakery's QV1 café is spacious and central, and staff don't mind laptop workers. The city stores open weekdays only. The bakery also has branches in Highgate, West Leederville, City Beach and Allendale Square.

KSP is at Katharine's Place in Greenmount, in the Perth Hills. Its residencies and retreats are designed to give writers time and space to write. The office opens Monday to Thursday. Call ahead.

The Rechabite spreads across four floors in Northbridge. Its hall stages bands, comedy and burlesque. Eat at the Double Rainbow restaurant, then head up to Hello Rooftop or down to the Goodwill Club in the basement.

Plated serves coffee and lunch at the Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, and it opens daily. The centre runs exhibitions and a Sunday music series.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is free to enter and opens daily. Its café serves coffee and light food during the day, with a bar menu in the afternoons.

Writing WA calls itself the voice for Western Australian writers. It runs workshops and lists writers' groups, and its site has guides on rates of pay, manuscript assessment, agents and self-publishing. It keeps the Literati directory of WA writers and a noticeboard. Donations go to its WA Writers' Fund.

Centre for Stories runs writing programs for early, emerging and established writers and poets. Its events have included First Nations Write Night, where First Nations writers work on their writing and get feedback. The centre has run the Human Rights Essay Prize since 2024 and publishes the digital journal Portside Review. Young people aged 16 to 24 can join The SPARK.

Beyond its residencies, KSP offers fellowships, creative writing workshops and writing groups. It also runs short fiction and poetry competitions.

Westerly has published fiction and poetry since 1956, and its editorial office is in UWA's Faculty of Arts. It also prints memoir, creative non-fiction, essays and literary criticism. Book reviews run on its site. Special issues and the archive of past issues are free to download.

The State Library's J.S. Battye Memorial Fellowship is a grant for Western Australian historians, curators and scholars whose work draws on its heritage collections. The library first offered a Fellowship for Aboriginal Researchers in 2024. Check the page to see whether a round is open.

The Institute of Advanced Studies brings researchers from around the world to UWA on IAS, Sabbatical and Gledden Visiting Fellowships, and it offers Gledden Mobility Grants. It hosts interdisciplinary seminars and workshops. Its public events include the Talking Allowed series.

Curtin's Faculty of Humanities groups its research in institutes, centres and clusters. They include the TikTok Cultures Research Network and the Centre for Human Rights Education, along with the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative and the Creative Education Research Hub.

Fremantle Press is an independent not-for-profit publisher whose mission is giving voice to Western Australian writers. Its list covers fiction, non-fiction and children's books, with First Nations memoir among them. It also oversees the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award.

UWA Publishing has published books since 1935. It issues fiction and poetry alongside history and scholarly books, and its collections include biography, natural history and Australian studies. It keeps an open-access collection.

New Media & Society is a Sage journal that combines theoretical and empirical research on the individual, social and cultural sides of new media, including the problems raised by the scale and speed of new media development. Its Editors-in-Chief are Crystal Abidin at Curtin University and Christian Katzenbach at ZeMKI, University of Bremen. Preparing an article for New Media & Society

The Journal of Inequalities and Applications publishes original research and survey articles on mathematics and its applications where inequalities play a central role, in areas such as analysis, approximation theory, combinatorics, geometry, optimization, and stochastic analysis. It is edited at Curtin University in Perth and Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, and published open access by Springer Nature under the SpringerOpen brand. Preparing an article for Journal of Inequalities and Applications

The State Library manages these annual awards for the state government to recognise excellence in Western Australian writing. Magabala Books runs the Daisy Utemorrah Award in partnership with them.

Fremantle Press gives this award for an unpublished manuscript by a Western Australian writer who has not yet published a full-length book in the eligible genres. Novels, verse novels, young adult fiction and narrative non-fiction are all eligible. Self-published writers may enter.

The state's Department of Creative Industries, Tourism and Sport funds a one-off project or a program of activity through this grant. Individuals and groups based in Western Australia can apply, and projects must involve artists or creatives who maintain a professional practice.

The department's fellowships support creative and skills development and career pathways. Arts Fellowships for Young People are for WA residents aged 18 to 25. Arts Development Fellowships go to WA-resident artists with at least five years of professional practice.

Practising artists and arts professionals who are Australian citizens or permanent residents can apply for these grants. Literature has its own assessment panel, and publishing is an eligible activity.

Editors For Students gathers grants and writing resources for Curtin University students on this page.

This page collects grants and writing resources for students at the University of Western Australia.

The arts centre's adult classes include a Drawing & Printmaking stream. It also runs the long-running Print Award, which the centre bills as Australia's biggest print prize.

UniPrint prints and binds theses, with temporary spiral binding for examination copies and hard-cover or cheaper softbound permanent copies. Orders go through its website, and non-UWA clients can order and pay online. The production facility is on Brooklands Way in Mount Claremont.