Where do you go when you need a little peace + quiet to get some work done? If you’re a writer in the Upstate, you can spend 15 weeks in a historic Spartanburg cottage in the Writers House Residency program, thanks to Hub City Writers Project.

Hub City has been cultivating and spotlighting the voices of Southern writers for 22 years, and has over 80 titles (including memoirs, novels + poetry) and 700+ writers to show for it. Hub City Press, also founded in 1995, independently publishes four to six books each year (distributed nationally by Publishers Group West) and hosts authors in its bookstore regularly.

Hub City Press is focused on writing with a sense of place + finding the South’s hidden literary voices. Wrote a novel and aren’t sure how to get it out there? Enter the South Carolina Novel Prize. Have a secret love for poetry writing? You could win the $1,000 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize.

Among all the growth + change in the South, Hub City is preserving Southern literary culture and creating a way for new writers to continue the tradition. It hosts writing conferences, workshops, author readings, resident writers, summer internships, and has donated thousands of books to local schools + commissioned public art, too.

Just 45 minutes up the road, Hub City might be printing your next favorite book. In the meantime, here are a few of our must-reads (or must-gift-a-book-lover) from their current roster:

Minnow by James E. McTeer II (magic, mystery + coastal S.C. scenery all in one novel)
Waking by Ron Rash (poetry that captures every detail of Southern life)
Expecting Goodness & Other Stories edited by C. Michael Curtis (short stories by 20 Southern authors, curated by the fiction editor of The Atlantic)
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks (a novel following a USDA agent + a woman who might be a witch in 1939 Appalachia)
The Only Sounds We Make by Lee Zacharias (nonfiction about language and memory, from animal communication to the way we organize our desks)
Mercy Creek by Matt Matthews (a novel full of small town secrets + teenage trouble)
Twenty edited by Kwame Dawes (20 S.C. poets share their favorite poems + explain the meanings behind them)
Ember by Brock Adams (not only is the sun dying, but a couple has to face their dying marriage, too)
Wedding Pulls by J.K. Daniels (mystical poetry exploring what marriage really is)

We’re pretty hyped for 2018’s upcoming releases, too:

Whiskey & Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith – Mar. 8 (a novel exploring how a police officer’s death makes waves in the community)
The Wooden King by Thomas McConnell – May 1 (a novel following a man trying to protect his family when Nazis invade Czechoslovakia in 1939)
Rodeo in Reverse by Lindsay Alexander – Sept. 4 (a poetry collection that weaves Americana + humanism with humor)