The Center for Fiction
What is it: For book lovers of all ages, whether those who love to read or those who love to write, The Center for Fiction celebrates fiction in all its stages, from first imaginings to beloved reads. Over 200-years after it was founded — originally as the Mercantile Library — the non-profit moved into its public-facing home in Brooklyn’s Cultural District in February 2019. Over 18,000 square feet across three floors, architects BKSK have created the conditions to make words come alive and to enter our lives in a multitude of ways.
Why you’ll love it: Browse the independent bookstore (with a focus on fiction, works in translation, and independent publishers), chat books in the café and terrace bar, attend workshops, events, writing groups, and seminars, or sit at a writing station to get down to the actual work of crafting your own story.
The Center is a living organization that grows both readers, from the youngest kids exposed to its workshops (see its Kids Read and Kids Write programs), and writers, from the earliest stages of their careers, such as the Emerging Writers Fellowship and First Novel Prize. Within its quote-strewn walls, books can be experienced at every point in their realization.
What you need to know: The Center is also home to a circulating library of over 70,000 books focused entirely on fiction, including a prominent crime fiction collection that goes back to the early twentieth century.
How to bring this into your life: Recently retired Executive Director Noreen Tomassi started a bibliotherapy program, that is still going strong, called A Novel Approach, which prescribes a year’s worth of fiction reading depending on your situation, your interests, your longings.
Why we think it matters: Though books are read alone, often they come alive when experienced together. The Center pivots on this duality. It offers a place of solace and reflection, a retreat, or maybe just a pause, from the noise and encroachments of modern living. And it sets up the connections between readers, to not just enliven narratives through discussion but to offer an antidote to our loneliness, and a comfortable excursionon for introverts. Books can take us inwards while opening up our worlds. We can hold fiction in our minds, and those stories can have a life that exists in conversation. The Center for Fiction attests to the importance of making physical space in the world that supports our imaginary one, bringing people together over words that connect.
In their own words: “The Center for Fiction, founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, is the only organization in the United States devoted solely to the vital art of fiction. The mission of The Center for Fiction is to encourage people to read and value fiction and to support and celebrate its creation and enjoyment.”
Something to inspire: How can you lift words off the page and live them in company, wherever you are? Seek out a writing community, a book club, an author’s talk, a book festival, an independent book store, a library. The Center is a one-stop-shop for the craft of fiction, but parse out its functions and you’ve got a version of your own making, slightly spread out but highly tailored to your world.
