A Writer's Guide to Tuscaloosa

The Main Library has overlooked the Black Warrior River since 1979. It holds a genealogy and local history collection along with newspaper and yearbook archives, useful to anyone writing about the town. Meeting rooms are available. It is closed Sundays.

Gorgas is the university's main library for the humanities and social sciences. Community visitors can use the public computers on the second floor near the Circulation Desk, where staff hand out temporary database logins. Borrowing takes a Bama Borrower's Card, sold at the same desk. There is a Java City café inside.

Hoole collects Southern history and culture, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, along with the university archives. The Wade Hall Collection is here, as is a digital collection of manuscripts and letters from Alabama author Elise Ayers Sanguinetti. The reading room works by appointment. Book through Aeon at least two business days ahead.

The Williams Collection holds about 20,000 volumes and pamphlets and more than 18,000 Southern photographs. Its Southern literature section is strong in first editions and signed copies, including early works by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Email Special Collections to arrange a visit.

Ernest & Hadley sells new, used, and rare books and keeps a list of local authors' books. A second building directly behind the shop, at 651 20th Avenue, holds stationery and more used and rare books. Authors sign and give talks in its event space. The store runs book clubs, too; look for its Local Book Club Reads list.

The Friends of the Tuscaloosa Public Library run this used bookstore in the back left corner of the Main Library, and you enter from outside. Used books and magazines sell cheaply, with records and DVDs on the shelves as well. It takes cash or check only and is closed Sundays and Mondays.

Heritage House is a locally owned coffeehouse that opened in 1993. Its tables and couches make it a good place to get work done. The riverfront shop is a short drive along the parkway from the Main Library.

Local coverage calls the Towncenter shop quiet enough for writing papers and articles. Plenty of tables and couches make it work for one writer or a group.

Nationally known poets and prose writers have come to Tuscaloosa to read since 1972, and UA's Creative Writing Program brings them each year for readings and workshops in the Bankhead series. The Coal Royalty chair adds a writer of national reputation for several days every semester. MFA students give readings too.

Instructors in UA's English department host Pure Products, which brings writers and artists from the university community together for readings and open mic nights.

The Cooperative has supported Alabama writers since 1923. It holds an annual conference and workshops, and it publishes the AWC Journal.

The Strode Program is a privately endowed program in UA's English department for the study of early modern British literature and culture. Its endowment pays for lectures and symposia, and it runs the Strode Book Series. The program's Shakespeare film series plays at the Bama Theatre.

The state humanities council is a Birmingham nonprofit, founded in 1974 and affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. Its Road Scholars Speakers Bureau sends scholars to speak in communities across Alabama. The Alliance also publishes Mosaic magazine and produces the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

The University of Alabama Press, the university's scholarly publishing arm, works in fields from Southern history and Native American studies to literary criticism and rhetoric. Creative nonfiction and memoir are on the list as well. Its imprints include Fiction Collective Two (FC2), an author-run publisher of non-traditional fiction.

Early American Literature, founded in 1965, is the official journal of the Society of Early Americanists and the MLA's Forum on Early American Literature. It publishes articles and reviews on American literature through the early national period. One of its two co-editors is at the University of Alabama. Preparing an article for Early American Literature

The State Council on the Arts gives fellowships to Alabama writers of poetry or prose. It weighs the writing together with the writer's career and service to the state. Applicants must be legal residents who have lived in Alabama for at least two years.

The Monroeville Literary Festival presents this lifetime-achievement award to a writer born in Alabama or whose career developed in the state. Harper Lee LLC funds it.

Presented at the same festival, the Capote Prize honors distinguished work by an Alabama writer in the short story or literary nonfiction.

The Humanities Alliance gives Mini Grants and Major Grants for public humanities programs in Alabama. A single lecture or a moderated book club can fit a Mini Grant; lecture series and oral history projects are common Major Grant work.

The Cooperative runs writing contests every year and collects the winning work in an anthology, the Awarded Writers' Collection.

Editors For Students tracks University of Alabama fellowships and conference travel funding here, along with the Writing Center and student journals.