A Writer's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area: Libraries, Bookstores, Writing Groups, and Presses

The sixth floor holds the San Francisco History Center and Book Arts & Special Collections. Study rooms for up to three people are first-come, first-served, so sign in when you arrive. The library is open daily.

The North Beach branch keeps a small collection by and about the Beat writers, along with local oral histories and poems by local poets. A Bill Fontana sound sculpture is part of the building.

Oakland's Main Library holds more than 350,000 books and the Oakland History Center. It also keeps a major collection of sheet music. Groups of up to 121 can reserve the Bradley Walters Community Meeting Room, which has a podium.

The Berkeley History Room, on the second floor, opens Wednesday mornings or by appointment. Upstairs, you can reserve a community meeting room or an electronic classroom. The library is closed Sundays.

The Bancroft is home to Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts, the Mark Twain Papers and Project, and the Oral History Center. Nothing circulates. Request materials through an Aeon account and read them in the Heller Reading Room, which keeps weekday hours.

Stanford's Special Collections hold manuscripts and rare books along with the University Archives. The California Historical Society Collection at Stanford is here too. Researchers from outside Stanford should contact staff before planning a visit.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin founded City Lights in 1953, and its publishing house still issues the Pocket Poets Series. Author events run weekly. The store is open daily.

Green Apple has sold new and used books since 1967. Only the Clement Street store buys used books. For readings, go to Green Apple Books on the Park at 1231 9th Ave, home of the monthly Wordnight series with USF.

The Booksmith sells new books and runs book clubs, and its calendar fills with author events. It is open daily.

Bird & Beckett sells books and records and publishes, too. Several evenings a week it hosts live music and poetry readings. The shop is closed Mondays.

Moe's fills four floors with mostly used books, plus new and rare titles. On the fourth floor, More Moe's specializes in fine arts, photography, and architecture and opens by appointment Wednesday through Saturday. The store buys books daily.

Pegasus sells new and used books from two Berkeley stores and one on College Avenue in Oakland. Poets should watch its calendar, which lists the monthly Lyrics & Dirges series and UC Berkeley poetry readings.

Mrs. Dalloway's is a literary and garden-arts bookstore with kids' and YA sections. It hosts author events.

Marcus Books describes itself as the nation's oldest Black-owned independent bookstore. It stocks books by and about Black people and keeps a section on Black feminisms and queer thought. Check its events calendar.

Walden Pond has sold new and used books since 1973. The shelves carry radical and left literature and local authors, and a rare-book room is in back. It buys books.

Mechanics' Institute is a nonprofit membership library, and membership opens its historic library for work and quiet reading. It also runs writers' groups and author talks. The library is closed Sundays.

Atlas is a big café with wifi and a back patio. The menu has sandwiches and pizza, and beer and wine are on tap in the evening. It is open daily.

Caffe Strada sits at the corner of College Avenue and Bancroft Way and calls itself a Berkeley landmark of more than 37 years. It opens early and stays open until midnight every day.

Farley's has served coffee since 1989, and Farley's East is its Oakland café.

The Morrison opened in 1928 and is open to the public, with comfortable seating and a poetry alcove. Laptops are not allowed, so bring a notebook. Lunch Poems meets here Thursdays at noon, and the room keeps weekday hours only.

Giovanni Giotta opened Caffe Trieste in 1956, and the café calls it the first espresso house on the West Coast. Poets and writers still gather here. Bring cash; laptops are allowed.

Vesuvio has been a bar since 1948, across Jack Kerouac Alley from City Lights. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac spent time here, and photos and clippings from North Beach's literary past cover the walls. Come for beer or wine.

Café Zoetrope is an Italian trattoria in the Sentinel Building, which Francis Ford Coppola bought in 1972 as headquarters for American Zoetrope. Several of his films were written and edited in the building, and many menu items are his own recipes. It takes reservations.

Kopi Bar and Bakery is the café inside the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Like the galleries, it is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Litquake is San Francisco's literary festival, run by the Litquake Foundation as a forum for Bay Area writing. Lit Crawl SF and a book fair are part of the festival. The Elder Project runs classes year-round.

The Writers Grotto is a nonprofit of more than 190 novelists, journalists, podcasters, and filmmakers, and membership is by application. It teaches courses and holds write-ins. Anyone can come to the free Words & Stories lunchtime readings or to Grotto Nights at the Main Library; the office itself is open by invitation.

The Center for the Book teaches letterpress, bookbinding, and risograph printing in person and online. Its gallery exhibitions are free. It also runs the From the Bench series and keeps the Bay Area Book Arts Calendar, and it is open Wednesday through Sunday.

The Poetry Center presents readings and talks on campus and at venues such as City Lights. Its American Poetry Archives hold about 5,000 hours of recordings of the series going back to 1954, some of them online. The Reading Room has 7,000 volumes of poetry.

The Bay Area Book Festival has brought author programs, Writers Workshops, and YouthLit to downtown Berkeley since 2015. The nonprofit also runs free Affinity Lit Collectives, among them Women Lit and LGBTQIA+ Lit.

Kearny Street Workshop has supported Asian American and Pacific Islander artists since 1972. Its APAture festival includes a Literary Arts Showcase. Workshops pair generative writing with community readings.

The Humanities Center gives residential fellowships to faculty from other institutions at every rank and to independent scholars, with no citizenship requirement. Early-career humanists can apply for its Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships.

The Townsend Center funds fellowships for assistant and associate professors and for dissertation writers. It supports more than 60 faculty and graduate working groups and hosts Berkeley Book Chats.

Cal Humanities is California's state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. It funds public humanities projects through Connecting California grants and the California Documentary Project.

eScholarship is the University of California's library publishing program, free to UC departments and scholars. It publishes more than 80 journals and supports open access books and conference proceedings. Authors keep their copyright.

UC Press is the nonprofit publishing arm of the University of California, with peer-reviewed books and journals across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. History and public health are among its subjects. Preparing a manuscript for University of California Press

Stanford University Press, founded in 1892, publishes in the humanities and social sciences, law, and business. It also publishes under the Redwood Press imprint. The press is in University Hall on Stanford's Redwood City campus. Preparing a manuscript for Stanford University Press

City Lights began publishing in 1955 with the Pocket Poets Series. More than 400 titles are in print, including literary translation and books on social and political issues.

Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher, founded in Berkeley in 1974. It publishes about twenty books a year on California history and culture, nature, and California Indian cultural renewal. Heyday also founded the magazines News from Native California and Bay Nature.

McSweeney's is a nonprofit publisher in San Francisco. It publishes Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and Illustoria, along with books under various imprints.

Nursing Administration Quarterly is a peer-reviewed journal of strategies for nurse executives in healthcare management and leadership. K.T. Waxman, a professor at the UCSF School of Nursing, writes its From the Editor pieces. Preparing an article for Nursing Administration Quarterly

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association's journal publishes research and scholarship in psychiatric-mental health nursing. Its editor, Michelle DeCoux Hampton, is at San José State University. Preparing an article for the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association

PLOS ONE publishes open access research in more than two hundred subject areas and judges papers on scientific validity and sound methods. Its publisher, PLOS, keeps its U.S. mailing address on Mission Street in San Francisco. Preparing an article for PLOS ONE

The journal publishes theoretical and applied research on autism and related developmental conditions, from causes and diagnosis to prevention and treatment. Lynn Kern Koegel of Stanford University is its editor-in-chief. Preparing an article for the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

The California Arts Council's fellowship recognizes California artists in any art form, at Emerging, Established, and Legacy tiers. Apply through the regional organization that serves your county; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley is one of them.

The Stegner is a two-year, non-degree fellowship in fiction and poetry, with a weekly faculty-led workshop and time to write. Writers of any nationality can apply, and no degree or prior book is required. Fellows must live near enough to campus to attend workshops.

The Commonwealth Club gives these awards each year to books by California residents. Categories run from fiction and poetry to young adult and Californiana, and there is a separate award for a first work of fiction.

Djerassi offers free one-month residencies to writers, visual artists, composers, and choreographers from around the world. The ranch covers 583 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

This page gathers grants and writing resources for Stanford students.

UC Berkeley students get the same guide for their campus.

San Francisco State students can start here.

This guide covers the University of San Francisco.

San José State students have a page of their own.

Santa Clara students will find grants and writing resources for their university here.

Students at Cal State East Bay can use this guide.

This page is for Saint Mary's College of California.

Samuel Merritt students can find grants and writing resources here.

Palo Alto University has its own page.

Saybrook University students can start from this page.

For a hand-bound edition or a short riso run, the Center for the Book rents studio time and equipment, and it offers bookbinding certificate programs. The Biblioshop sells supplies.

Arion Press has made books entirely by hand since 1974. Its type foundry, letterpress workshop, and bindery share one roof. Public tours run on the second Thursday and third Saturday of each month; book them through Eventbrite.

Kala runs printmaking and multimedia studios, with adult classes and residencies. Its gallery is at 2990 San Pablo Ave.

The University of California's bindery hardbinds theses and dissertations in buckram, with imitation leather as an option. Order online from a PDF or mail printed copies; processing usually takes two weeks. Students outside UC should ask whether they can order.