The Duff’s Restaurant Literary Events Collection consists of flyers, schedules, clippings, photographs, and correspondence tracing the history of the Duff’s Poetry Reading Series from 1974-2013. These materials were kept in binders by proprietor and donor, Karen Duffy.

The James Merrill Papers hold a wide variety of materials that deeply document James Ingram Merrill's entire life, including 112 boxes of correspondence, and thousands of pages of heavily annotated notebooks, typescripts, worksheets, and galleys towards poems, fiction, and drama. Extensive journals, Ouija board transcripts, photographs, realia, ephemera and more provide further insight into Merrill’s rich and complex inner, professional and social circles.

The Jan Garden Castro Papers include a variety of Castro’s personal research materials, educational materials, writings, and correspondence. These items include numerous original transcripts and cassette tapes of her interviews, typescript drafts, photocopies and clippings of books and art reviews, exhibit catalog essays, notebooks and diaries, and Castro’s other writings relating to River Styx. Audiovisual materials include Castro’s taped interviews, episodes of her Double Helix cable TV show The Writers’ Circle, and poetry readings from the Duff’s and River Styx PM Series.

The Michael Castro Papers consists of manuscripts and other materials from Castro's editorial work and literary career, ephemeral items including advertisements and posters for local literary events he organized and participated in, correspondence with other writers about his “Poetry Beat” radio program and other topics, books by mostly St. Louis area authors, literary journals and little magazines, and cassette tapes and CD's largely of poetry readings, often by their authors. 

The River Styx Archive includes correspondence, biographies, ephemera, and miscellany material concerning individual River Styx contributors or Duff's/P.M. Series readers and performers; editorial, office-related and administrative, Board of Directors, University of Missouri - St. Louis, and financial crisis correspondence; material towards specific issues; material from Duff's Reading Series, P.M. Series, Poetry Beat radio program, and other River Styx events; business files; River Styx executive committee and Board of Directors information; and various ephemera.

The Samuel Beckett Papers focus on his work during the 1960s and early 70s. They contain extensive drafts toward short prose pieces and scripts for stage, radio, television and film. Other highlights include notebooks with his auto-translation work, the heavily revised galley proof of the novel Watt, correspondence between the bookseller, Henry Wenning, and Beckett, photographs of Beckett and various productions, and illustrations of Beckett.

The William Gaddis Papers consist largely of his own manuscripts and source material toward his books, various stories both published and unpublished, as well as essays, reviews, interviews, poetry, and drama. Gaddis similarly kept a wide assortment of personal papers, ephemera, a/v materials, photographs and works by others. Also present is a substantial amount of personal and general correspondence, primarily with family, friends, editors, translators, publishers, fans, and colleagues in the literary community.