A Writer's Guide to Winchester

Winchester Library is inside The Arc, Hampshire Cultural Trust's arts centre on Jewry Street. It has quiet study spaces and free computers you can book. Remote printing is available too. Anyone who lives, works or studies in Hampshire can join, and on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays the library runs as self-service.

The county archive near Winchester station holds about a million catalogued Hampshire records, along with local studies material and Winchester Cathedral's archives. Its Wessex Film and Sound Archive keeps over 22,000 films and videos and 16,000 sound recordings. The searchroom opens Tuesday to Thursday. Booking is essential, and regular visitors should get an Archives Card.

The Cathedral Library holds about 40 manuscripts, 17 incunables and more than 3,000 books printed before 1850, with a modern reference library of around 2,000 books. Cathedral visitors can see the 17th-century Morley Library. Research enquiries go to the curator by email.

Staff and researchers from other universities who hold SCONUL Access can use the University of Winchester's main library during staffed hours and borrow up to five items. Bring your university ID, the SCONUL approval and a passport photo. Members of the public are admitted on weekdays in the summer vacation.

P&G Wells has been an independent bookseller since 1729, and Jane Austen was a customer. It stocks new books for adults and children, with a local-interest selection and a Jane Austen section. Author events and book launches run through the year. There is a book group too.

Volunteers have run this second-hand bookshop in the Cathedral's Inner Close since 2001. They favour good-quality and unusual titles in many genres. Proceeds support the Cathedral's Music Foundation.

October Books is a radical community bookshop in Southampton, about 12 miles south, led by its staff and members. It stocks local authors alongside new releases and classics. The shop runs events, and its community space is available for hire.

One Tree Books was founded in Petersfield in 1994 and has a café at the back of the shop. The Petersfield Writers Group meets there every Tuesday afternoon. Book launches and author panels fill the events list, and the shop runs a book club and a classic book club.

The Pump House is a private co-working space for creative thinkers and people who work from home, set in a Victorian pumping station built in 1878. Members can book small meeting rooms. Co-working runs on weekdays, and the garden café opens at weekends.

The Cathedral Café is behind an ancient flint wall opposite the Cathedral. Inside there is banquette seating; outside there is a terrace with Cathedral views and a walled garden. It opens daily.

The tearoom is in the medieval Hundred Men's Hall of the Hospital of St Cross, the almshouse Simon Jenkins called England's most perfect, where food was once given each day to 100 poor men. The Porter's Lodge still hands out the Wayfarer's Dole of bread and ale. Trollope drew on the 19th-century St Cross scandal over the master's income for The Warden.

The café at The Arc is light and airy and has an outdoor terrace. During live performances and events it turns into a bar. The Arc's shop sells art books and work by local makers. The building opens daily.

Hampshire Writers' Society is run by its members and has connected local writers since 2011. Some of its evening events are held at Tower Arts Centre. Once a month, members meet for a coffee-and-writing chat in the café at The Arc. There is a writing competition every month, and the Writers Read book group meets as well. Sign up for the weekly email of local events and news.

Winchester Poetry Festival is a charity that runs the festival along with the international Winchester Poetry Prize and the F.T. Prince Lecture. Younger poets can enter its Young Poets' Competition. It also runs community poetry projects across Hampshire.

Winchester Books Festival brings authors of fiction, non-fiction and children's books to the city each April for talks and conversations. Some festival events take place at The Arc. Special events run through the rest of the year.

ArtfulScribe is a not-for-profit writer development agency in Southampton for writers across Hampshire, Dorset and the Solent region. It runs writing workshops and residencies and holds live events. It also publishes, and writers can find career-development opportunities through it.

The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research brings History, Archaeology, Theology and English together to study the centuries from the end of the Classical period to 1600. Its strengths include Anglo-Saxon history, late medieval England and Europe, and the history of Winchester and Wessex. Medieval scholars give a major lecture there as a regular event. The centre also runs the Middle Ages in Modern Games conference on social media.

The University of Winchester's Culture-Media-Text Research Centre brings together arts and humanities research on literature, film and media. Its annual symposium is open to researchers at all levels. It also hosts visiting lectures and exhibitions.

Winchester University Press is the University of Winchester's publishing division. It publishes peer-reviewed, open-access academic books and journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The Journal of Perpetrator Research is one of them.

Theory, Culture & Society explores the relationship between culture and society, giving social and cultural theory a central role across the social sciences and the humanities. The journal is based at Goldsmiths, University of London. One of its managing editors is at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Preparing an article for Theory, Culture & Society

Project Grants is Arts Council England's open-access fund for arts, libraries and museums projects. Individual practitioners can apply, as can community and cultural organisations.

The Royal Literary Fund supports professional writers across the UK. It makes grants to writers who need financial help, and its Fellowship scheme places writers in more than 100 UK universities to help students with academic writing.

The Winchester Poetry Prize is an annual international competition judged blind by a single judge who reads every poem. Longlisted poems are published in an anthology. A donation-funded Pay-It-Forward scheme helps poets on low incomes enter.

The Kathryn Bevis Prize goes to the best poem entered in the Winchester Poetry Prize by a poet living in Hampshire.

The festival's Open Call lets any author with a book pitch it to a judging panel in a five-minute presentation, in person or online. The winner is programmed into the April festival alongside its headline authors.

Editors For Students gathers grants and writing resources for University of Southampton students on one page. The university's Winchester School of Art is in the city.