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

The Oakland building is the main library of the Carnegie Library system. Writers working on regional history should start in its Pennsylvania Department, part of Family & Local History. Rare and unique materials have their own Special Collections Room. There are meeting rooms, too.

The Squirrel Hill branch is a few doors from the Forbes Avenue bookstores and cafés. It runs a book club along with adult programs.

Pitt's Archives & Special Collections reading room is on the third floor of Hillman Library. Its more than 130,000 rare books and printed materials run from 16th-century illuminated books to 20th-century underground zines, and it holds the August Wilson Archive and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Collection of Historical Children's Literature. Request materials through an Aeon Research Portal account. More holdings sit at the Archives Service Center on Thomas Boulevard.

The Posner Center holds CMU's rare books and special collections. Contact the libraries about visitor access before you go.

The Detre Library & Archives, on the sixth floor of the Heinz History Center, is free and open to the public. Library-only visitors skip museum admission and pick up a sticker at Admissions. About 3,500 archival collections and 700,000 photographs document Western Pennsylvania, along with 40,000 books. Appointments are recommended. The library opens Wednesday through Saturday.

Nonprofit City of Asylum runs this bookstore, which specializes in works in translation. Alphabet City, the building it shares, hosts free readings and concerts most weeks. The store's book club meets downstairs in the Word Cellar.

White Whale is a family-owned general bookstore that carries literary fiction, poetry and philosophy, along with local authors and independent presses. Poetry nights and writing workshops are on its calendar, and it runs an offsite literary series. Authors can ask about giving a reading by email. The café came in 2021.

Amazing Books & Records sells used books and records from two shops. The Downtown store sits at the base of One Oxford Centre. On Thursday evenings and Saturday nights the Squirrel Hill store pours free beer for browsers 21 and over.

Caliban sells used and rare books to readers and collectors. Poetry and plays have their own sections, as do cultural studies and Eastern studies, and a corner holds vintage records and CDs. It is open daily. On Thursday nights the shop stays open later for rotating sales.

City Books has sold used and collectible books since 1984, and its shop is in Allegheny West, on the North Side. Its Writer-in-Residence program is for emerging and marginalized writers, and the shop hosts author conversations from time to time. It opens Wednesday through Sunday.

Riverstone opened its first store, in McCandless, in 2017, and its Squirrel Hill branch in 2021. Picture-book writers should spend time in the large children's department. A monthly Squirrel Hill Book Club meets in the store.

Commonplace roasts its coffee in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and this café sits on the Forbes Avenue bookstore stretch. It has indoor and outdoor seating and opens daily.

This small café has floor-to-ceiling windows onto the neighborhood and is a short walk from City of Asylum and City Books. It opens daily. Weekend mornings are at times standing room only, so a weekday suits a long session.

Tazza D'Oro has made coffee in Pittsburgh since 1999, and its Highland Park café opens daily. Its second counter, on the third floor of CMU's Gates Center, is open to the public on weekdays.

Redhawk's small Oakland café is a few blocks from Hillman Library and Carnegie Library Main. It is open seven days. Another Redhawk café, in CMU's Scaife Hall, opens on weekdays.

Cucina Alfabeto is the Italian restaurant in Alphabet City, which it shares with City of Asylum. Three nights a week, City of Asylum's free program of author talks and multilingual poetry readings runs during dinner. The restaurant is closed Mondays and Tuesdays and serves brunch on weekends.

The Café at the Frick serves lunch, brunch and afternoon tea on the Frick Pittsburgh grounds. It takes no reservations and closes Mondays.

The Warhol Café is a coffee bar and grab-and-go counter in the Andy Warhol Museum's lobby gallery, and you can reach it without museum admission. Drinks are served on Friday evenings. It is closed Tuesdays.

City of Asylum runs a residency for writers living in exile, which it describes as the largest of its kind in the world. Its free literary and translation events take place at Alphabet City, its permanent Northside home. The bookstore stocks world literature in translation alongside bestsellers.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures runs several author series. Ten Evenings is the main one. Made Local features local authors. Words & Pictures brings in children's and young adult authors, and Poets Aloud fills out the calendar.

CAAPP hosts readings and public events at Pitt. Its Dream Space program, open to poets and poet-scholars among others, has two arms: a residency and a post-MFA or postdoctoral fellowship. With Autumn House Press it runs the CAAPP Book Prize, and its archives include the Cave Canem Oral History Project.

Carlow University founded Madwomen in the Attic in 1979 to support women writers. Its semester-long workshops in poetry, fiction and nonfiction are open to women from the community as well as undergraduates, and they meet on campus or online. Peer mentorship is free. The program also publishes the annual anthology Voices from the Attic and gives the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award.

Pitt faculty can apply to the Humanities Center for a Faculty Fellowship, which comes with a course release and a colloquium to lead. The Co-Teaching Fellowship brings together faculty from different departments to build a new undergraduate course. The colloquium series meets weekly on Thursdays during the fall and spring terms.

CMU's Humanities Center supports interdisciplinary humanities research in Dietrich College with Faculty Research Grants and grants for graduate students. Its workshops have included sessions on public scholarship and trade publishing. It also supports working groups and runs a film series.

Pitt Open Library Publishing publishes more than thirty peer-reviewed diamond open access journals, with no fees to read or publish. Journal editors get training and DOI assignment, along with guidance on publishing ethics and indexing. Its focus is shifting toward student journals and journals with Pitt or regional ties.

PA Humanities is Pennsylvania's state humanities council, and it offers grants through its grant portal. Its PA Cultural Exchange fellowship gathers cultural practitioners, among them historians and librarians. It also runs Rain Poetry, a community poetry project.

Autumn House is a nonprofit literary publisher based in Pittsburgh. It publishes full-length collections of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, along with anthologies and chapbooks. The press also produces audiobooks. Preparing a manuscript for Autumn House Press

The University of Pittsburgh Press publishes scholarly books across many fields, as well as books for general readers. Its poetry list is the Pitt Poetry Series.

Carnegie Mellon University Press publishes poetry and plays, including work in translation, alongside academic titles and open education books. Tartan Editions and ETC Press titles come from the press too. So do journals and tabletop games.

Oncology Nursing Forum publishes oncology nursing research and supports translating research evidence into practice and policy. The Oncology Nursing Society publishes it in-house from its Pittsburgh headquarters, and editor Janine Overcash is at The Ohio State University College of Nursing. Preparing an article for Oncology Nursing Forum

The Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing publishes clinically relevant, evidence-based articles that advance oncology nursing and cancer care. ONS publishes it in-house in Pittsburgh. Joni L. Watson is editor-in-chief. Preparing an article for the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing

The University of Pittsburgh Press gives the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for literary short fiction and publishes the winning collection. Writers qualify once they have published at least three short stories or novellas, a story collection or a novel. Judging is anonymous.

The press has given the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize since 1981 for a poet's first full-length book. The winning book appears in the Pitt Poetry Series.

Autumn House gives an annual prize in each of its three genres and publishes the winning full-length manuscripts. The CAAPP Book Prize, run with Pitt's Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, is for a first or second book by a writer of African descent. Poetry qualifies, as do forms that intersect with it, such as hybrid work and translation.

The Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator is for Pennsylvanians growing an established for-profit creative micro-business. Publishing is an eligible field, and editors and writers count. Bridgeway Capital administers the program with partners that include the PA Small Business Development Centers.

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

Carnegie Mellon students can find grants and campus writing resources in this Editors For Students guide.

The Editors For Students guide for Duquesne University gathers grants and writing resources for its students.

Robert Morris University students have their own Editors For Students page of grants and writing resources.

Lindsay Schmittle runs Gingerly Press, a letterpress studio in Central Lawrenceville that makes prints and stationery. Her beginner workshops teach setting and printing vintage metal and wood type. No experience is needed. Book a public session from the workshop calendar, or arrange a private or team-building one.

The Text & conText Lab is a hands-on book and print lab inside Pitt's Archives & Special Collections, run with the university's Center for Creativity. Its 19th-century Columbian letterpress has been used at drop-in printing events.