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

Princeton Public Library has study rooms you can book. Its Public Humanities Initiative brings authors in for talks and readings, some co-presented with Labyrinth Books, and keeps recordings of them. Area writers read from their own books at the library's Local Author Day.

Firestone welcomes visitors, but its reading rooms and open stacks take a free access card or day pass, and eligibility depends on your affiliation with the university. Visitors who want to borrow can buy a card for a year or a half-year. The Cotsen Children's Library and the Milberg Gallery are open to all.

No appointment is needed. Register for a Special Collections research account and bring photo ID. Rare materials from the Cotsen Children's Library and the Scheide Library are read here, and items stored off-site at ReCAP take 48 to 72 hours to arrive, so request them ahead.

Mudd holds the Princeton University Archives along with a collection of 20th-century public policy papers. The same research account and photo ID get you in.

The seminary library's Special Collections hold more than 100,000 printed works and over 5,175 linear feet of archives and manuscripts, centered on the Presbyterian and Reformed traditions and on ecumenical Christianity. Some study spaces are first-come, first-served. Visitors start from the library's Plan Your Visit page.

Labyrinth is independent and family-owned. It specializes in academic and rare books alongside new releases, and the used books are downstairs. Author events run at the store and at campus and library venues, among them Writers on Writing and the Book Brunch conversations with Princeton Public Library.

Farley's, across the Delaware River in New Hope, Pennsylvania, describes itself as Bucks County's oldest independent bookstore. Authors launch books there. The drive from Princeton is about 15 miles west.

About 15 miles south of Princeton in Bordentown, this shop sells used and antiquarian books, roughly 10,000 hardcovers in all. It keeps strong sections in New Jersey history, American and military history, and historical mysteries. It closes Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Small World has two downtown cafés and has been a Princeton fixture for more than 30 years. A student writing for Princeton Alumni Weekly called it a go-to for off-campus studying.

Sakrid runs a café on Nassau Street, open daily. Princeton Alumni Weekly found it suited to long stretches of work.

Rojo's, a local roaster, keeps an espresso bar on Palmer Square. It is open daily.

The Graduate hotel on Chambers Street has a library-style lobby with a coffee bar. A Daily Princetonian writer recommended its long wooden table, which has lamps and charging outlets, and found the lobby's background chatter good white noise for studying.

The Nassau Inn has been a Princeton landmark since 1756, and its tavern sits beneath Norman Rockwell's 13-foot "Yankee Doodle" mural from 1937. Einstein's initials are said to be carved into one of its oak tables. Historic Hotels of America named it one of America's 25 Most Historic Bars.

Mosaic is the third-floor restaurant in the art museum, with seating on a terrace. Admission to the museum is free. The restaurant closes Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Rat's sits on the campus of Grounds For Sculpture, a 42-acre sculpture park in Hamilton about 10 miles south of Princeton. Book a table through OpenTable.

Princeton's Program in Creative Writing brings visiting authors and its own faculty to Labyrinth Books for this free annual series, with books on hand for signing. Seniors read beside guest writers of their choosing in the program's C.K. Williams Reading Series. Every other year, the Lewis Center for the Arts brings poets from around the world for the Princeton Poetry Festival.

Once a month the Arts Council hosts a free storytelling and poetry open mic for all ages and every level of experience. Its visual-arts classes and exhibitions share the building.

Princeton Makes, an artist cooperative in the Princeton Shopping Center, hosts the free Second Sunday Poetry Reading with Ragged Sky Press, a local poetry publisher. Featured poets read first. Then audience members take the open mic with their own poems.

The School of Historical Studies supports any work in the humanities where historical methods apply, and it hosts visiting members alongside its faculty. Its main fields run from Greek and Roman civilizations and medieval Europe to the Islamic world, the history of science, and East Asian studies. The school encourages work that crosses departmental lines.

The Center of Theological Inquiry is an institute for advanced study in theology, modeled on the Institute for Advanced Study. Theologians come in research cohorts to work in residence. The center also brings them together with scholars in other fields and with public leaders.

Each year the Society of Fellows selects a new cohort of Cotsen postdoctoral fellows in the humanities and humanities-related social sciences. Fellows spend three years researching and teaching in a Princeton department. They meet with faculty fellows in seminars and reading groups.

The Council is New Jersey's state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, based in Camden. Its programs include Community History and the Clemente Course in the Humanities. It also gives the Stanley N. Katz Prize for Excellence in Public Humanities.

Princeton University Press has more than 10,000 titles across many subjects. It publishes peer-reviewed scholarship and monographs alongside trade books, textbooks, and audiobooks. Besides its Princeton headquarters, it has offices in Oxford, England, and Beijing. Preparing a manuscript for Princeton University Press

These fellowships go to practicing artists who live in New Jersey, chosen through anonymous, competitive review. Mid Atlantic Arts administers them for the State Council on the Arts. Writers can apply in poetry or in playwriting/screenwriting when those categories are offered.

The Poetry Center in Paterson gives this prize to the book of poems it judges strongest among those published the previous year. Authors and publishers can both submit. The winner gives a reading and teaches a workshop at the center.

The Ginsberg Awards are for single unpublished poems. Winners and honorable mentions appear in the Paterson Literary Review, and winners are invited to read at the Poetry Center.

This page gathers grants and writing resources for Princeton University students.

The same guide, for Rider University students.

The Friends of the Princeton University Library fund travel to Princeton, and a stay of usually a few weeks, for research in Special Collections, the Marquand Library's rare books, and the East Asian Library's Gest Collection. Doctoral students, recent doctorates, faculty, and independent scholars from outside Princeton may apply, from anywhere in the world.

Artworks is an arts center in downtown Trenton, about 12 miles southwest of Princeton, with galleries and a print studio. The studio is open by sign-up for letterpress, relief and woodblock printing, silkscreen, and more.

Printmaking is one of the Arts Council's class subjects.