A Writer's Guide to Williamsburg

The Williamsburg Library has been on Scotland Street since 1973. Its meeting rooms can be booked online.

The James City County branch has three meeting rooms, one of them the Grace and Stanley Kitzinger Community Room. Reserve them online.

Swem is William & Mary's library on Landrum Drive. The Special Collections Research Center on its first floor holds nearly 35,000 rare books along with manuscripts and the University Archives, and its Richard Wright Collection covers comic arts and Black history. Any researcher may work there. Space is limited, so email Special Collections for an appointment and set up a Special Collections account before you come.

Colonial Williamsburg's research library covers British America from the colonial period through the early United States, and the buildings and trades of 18th-century Williamsburg. It welcomes independent scholars and anyone interested in history. The library is open weekdays.

The Fallen Acorn is a women-owned shop selling new books, down a brick staircase beneath Kilwin's in the space Mermaid Books once held. It opened in 2024 and sells audiobooks through Libro.fm. The shop is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Novelist Lucas Marino opened Spineless Reads, a fiction bookstore at Settler's Market, in 2025. Horror is its biggest section. Thrillers, fantasy and romance fill much of the rest.

Paperbacks Ink is an independent bookstore in Newport News, about 20 miles southeast of Williamsburg, with a café and an event space inside. It takes donations of gently used books. Local authors can email its local-author team about signings and consignment.

Meripoint's Writing Corner sets aside quiet hours each week, when writers can reserve one of its themed rooms. It also holds workshops. Several writing groups meet there monthly. The shop up front sells new and gently read books, local authors among them, and is open Tuesday through Friday.

Aromas roasts its coffee on a Diedrich roaster in the shop and bakes its own cakes, pies and pastries. It serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, so a long session can run into the evening.

Column15 is a locally owned café and roastery, roasting since 2018. Its main store hosts music performances and book releases, and the event room can be rented. During the spring and fall semesters a second Column15 opens inside Swem Library.

1607 Coffee has wooden tables, a leather sofa, and a patio with umbrellas. It opens early on weekdays and Saturdays.

Anonymous Coffee in New Town has a European-style lounge with plush seating meant for long visits, and there is Wi-Fi. On the second Wednesday of each month it holds a guided art-making evening. It is open daily.

The Museum Café is inside the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, home to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. It is open daily for soups, salads and sandwiches, with tavern beer and wine.

Spoke + Art is a trailside café serving coffee, sandwiches and pastries. Seating runs from the front porch out to the deck and the lawn. Musicians play the deck on weekend afternoons from April through October. It is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Jane Vobe established the King's Arms in 1772. Its menu draws on colonial recipes, the room is lit by pewter candlesticks, and the servers wear period attire. It is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The Williamsburg Book Festival is a free annual event with authors, poets and publishers from Virginia and beyond. Authors and publishers can apply to exhibit. There are workshops too, and a yearly contest for young writers.

Chesapeake Bay Writers is the Virginia Writers Club chapter for Williamsburg and James City and York counties. It sponsors critique groups in person and on Zoom. Its author talks and open mics are open to the public, and members talk about their new books on a monthly radio show.

The Poetry Society of Virginia runs an annual contest for adults and students, and it gives the North American Poetry Book Award. Its Virginia Voices readings meet on Zoom. The society also co-sponsors poetry contests with the Williamsburg Book Festival.

The Omohundro Institute offers one-month visiting fellowships in early American history, some of them run with the Folger Shakespeare Library and Fort Ticonderoga. Advanced graduate students at institutions in the US and abroad can apply for Lapidus-OI predoctoral fellowships, which help pay for archival research travel. Each year a travel scholarship brings a faculty member or graduate student from Africa, the Caribbean or the Americas to an OI conference or workshop.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation fellows live on site while researching early America or 18th- and 19th-century Virginia. Projects on the histories of marginalized people, or of Colonial Williamsburg itself, also qualify. Fellows receive a monthly stipend and work from the Rockefeller Library's books and manuscripts and the museums' material culture collections. Discounted housing on site depends on availability.

Virginia Humanities is the state humanities council, based in Charlottesville. Besides its Public Humanities Fellowships, it offers the HBCU Scholars Fellowship and the Rosel Schewel Fellowship, which supports inclusive stories of Virginia women. It also makes grants to nonprofit cultural organizations.

Emerald publishes the Journal of Educational Administration, an international refereed journal of educational leadership and management founded in 1963. It carries research on educational administration in diverse political, economic and sociocultural settings. One of its two editors-in-chief is at William & Mary. Preparing an article for Journal of Educational Administration

These fellowships give writers and independent scholars time and funding to research and share stories of Virginia's history and culture. Community historians and college faculty can apply too.

The Library of Virginia's annual awards honor books by Virginia authors, and a nonfiction book on a Virginia subject can also qualify. A separate Children's Virginia Literary Award covers picture books and middle-grade titles. Readers vote for the People's Choice Awards.

The Virginia Commission for the Arts makes these grants to practicing artists who are legal Virginia residents. A grant can pay for a masterclass or a temporary residency, among other steps in an artist's career. Full-time students cannot apply.

Virginia Writers Club members compete each year in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Williamsburg-area entries are judged first through Chesapeake Bay Writers, and each chapter's first-place winners go on to the statewide round.

The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts gives writers, visual artists and composers residencies at Mt. San Angelo, in the Blue Ridge foothills near Amherst, and at le Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France. Each Fellow gets a private bedroom and studio. Meals are shared.

Editors For Students gathers summer research grants, student journals and prizes, and the writing centers for William & Mary students.

A matching guide covers scholarships, prizes and the Writing Center for Hampton University students.

Swem's Special Collections Research Center gives travel grants to faculty, graduate students and independent researchers from outside William & Mary, and writers and artists are welcome to apply. Researchers coming from more than 100 miles away can receive a larger grant. Its holdings include the Archive of American LGBTQ Political and Legal History and the Warren E. Burger Collection.

The print shop on the ground floor of the Sadler Center serves the surrounding community as well as William & Mary. It handles small- and large-format printing, comb and coil binding, and booklets. Send a job online or by email, or bring it in. Hackworth, a Southeast Virginia printing company founded in 1991, runs the shop.

In Colonial Williamsburg's Printing Office, printers set type and use reproduction presses to make colonial newspapers, pamphlets and books. At the Bindery, bookbinders talk about how fine books were made in the 18th century.