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Jack Kerouac lived in this house in Orlando, Florida, at the time On the Road made him a national sensation. Kerouac also wrote his follow-up to On the Road, The Dharma Bums, at this location in the course of eleven days and nights. Today, the Kerouac House gives tours of the house and The Kerouac Project provides four residencies a year to writers.
James Merrill came to Stonington in 1954 and took up residence at 107 Water Street with his companion, David Jackson. Merrill spent summers in Stonington until his death in 1995. James Merrill’s apartment is open to the general public four afternoons a year. At other times, visits may be arranged by appointment. The James Merrill House Writer-in-Residence Program offers one 4-1/2 month residency between mid-January and the end of May, and three shorter residencies of 2 to 6 weeks during the months between Labor Day and mid-January.
Built in 1759 by a wealthy royalist, this house was occupied by Henry W. Longfellow from 1837 to 1882. Previously, the house also served as headquarters for General George Washington during the Siege of Boston, and has seen the company of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, and other revolutionary leaders. The house and grounds are open to the public every day of the year, with special group and student tours available.
Built in 1851 and home to Ernest Hemingway for more than ten years (starting in 1931), this house in Key West, Florida, is now open to the public as a Hemingway museum and bookstore. Today, the estate still remains to be the single largest residential property on the island of Key West. Guided tours of the house and gardens are available.
Boswell Book Company opened in April 2009 in the Downer Avenue location of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop, a beloved Milwaukee bookstore that had closed a month earlier after seventy-two years in business. Boswell’s owner, Daniel Goldin, was the long-time book buyer for Schwartz.
Women & Children First is one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country, stocking more than thirty thousand books by and about women, children’s books for all ages, and the best of lesbian and gay fiction and nonfiction. The bookstore hosts book launches, talks, and readings across multiple genres.
The City of Books, as the four-story flagship store in Portland, Oregon, is known, occupies an entire city block, and carries more than one million books. Each month, the Basil Hallward Gallery (located upstairs in the Pearl Room) hosts a new art exhibit, as well as dozens of author events featuring acclaimed writers, artists, and thinkers.
Square Books is a general independent bookstore in three separate buildings (about one hundred feet apart) on the historic town square of Oxford, Mississippi. The main store, Square Books, is in a two-story building with a cafe and balcony on the second floor; Off Square Books is a few doors down from the main store and has lifestyle sections such as gardening and cookbooks; and Square Books Jr, the children’s bookstore, is in a building on the east side of the square.
Native New Orleanian John Biguenet, author of seven books and many prizewinning plays, highlights postflood literary New Orleans—"a palimpsest" on which "the past bleeds through the fresh culture now being inscribed over the submerged text, centuries old."
The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds more than 80,000 books and 11,000 linear feet of archival materials. Notable collections include an extensive Emily Dickinson manuscript collection, holdings of books by and about Robert Frost, and books by Richard Wilbur, Louise Bogan, James Merrill, and Carl Sandburg.
