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City Lights Bookstore
Photo by Karen Horton / flickr

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133
United States

(415) 362-8193; staff at citylights.com

New/Used: Not set

Web site: http://www.citylights.com/

Events: http://www.citylights.com/bookst… (updated February 14)

Description: Legendary bookstore and publishing house founded in 1953 by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. For over fifty years the center of literary culture in North Beach, City Lights was the first business to be made an official San Francisco historic landmark. Founded as the nation's first all-paperbacks bookstore, City Lights now carries new hardcovers and quality paperbacks from all major publishers, and is particularly strong in small, independent publishers. The store specializes in fiction, cultural studies, world history, politics, and, of course, poetry.

Added by: SqueakyChu.  Contacted: Not contacted.  Venue ID: 318

Venue claimed by CityLightsBooks (about) | add an event

Favorites

Comment wall

This place is great. A whole rack of independent press, a whole room of poetry, and a wide selection of literature and non-fiction on it's three floors. Good place to find more independent and obscure works.
August 2008 by poetontheone
My daughter visited this store last year. I'll forever bear her a grudge for not bringing me back a boofk from the old stomping grounds of Richard Brautigan. :-)
February 2008 by SqueakyChu

Upcoming events

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Past events

Frank Wilderson, discussing Incognero: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (September 16 at 7:00pm)
Frank Wilderson reads from Incognero: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid.
discussing
Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apertheid
published by South End Press

In 1995, a South African journalist informed Frank Wilderson, one of only two Black American members of the African National Congress (ANC), that President Nelson Mandela considered him “a threat to national security.” ... (more)Wilderson was asked to comment. Incognegro is that “comment.” It is also his response to a question posed five years later by a student in a California university classroom: “How come you came back?”

Although Wilderson recollects his turbulent life in South Africa during the furious last gasps of apartheid, Incognegro is a quintessentially American story. Wilderson taught at Johannesburg and Soweto universities by day. By night, he helped the ANC coordinate clandestine propaganda, launch psychological warfare, and more. In this mesmerizing memoir, Wilderson’s lyrical prose flows from childhood episodes in the white Minneapolis enclave “integrated” by his family to a rebellious adolescence at the student barricades in Berkeley and under tutelage of the Black Panther Party; from unspeakable dilemmas in the red dust and ruin of South Africa to political battles raging quietly on US campuses and in his intimate life. Readers will find themselves suddenly overtaken by the subtle but resolute force of Wilderson’s biting wit, rare vulnerability, and insistence on bearing witness to history no matter the cost.

A literary tour de force sure to spark fierce debate in both America and South Africa, Incognegro retells a story most Americans assume we already know, with a sometimes awful, but ultimately essential clarity about global politics and our own lives.

Frank B. Wilderson, III is the award-winning author of Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Duke University Press, forthcoming) and the director of Reparations . . . Now (in progress).
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
Staughton Lynd (September 21 at 5:00pm)
Staughton Lynd reads from Wobblies & Zapatistas .
Celebrating the release of

Wobblies & Zapatistas:
Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History
co-authored by Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic.

&

a new edition of
Labor Law For The Rank & Filer

both titles published by PM Press

Wobblies and Zapatistas offers the reader ... (more)an encounter between two generations and two traditions. Andrej Grubacic is an anarchist from the Balkans. Staughton Lynd is a lifelong pacifist, influenced by Marxism. They meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to remind us of the idea that 'my country is the world.' Encompassing a Left libertarian perspective and an emphatically activist standpoint, these conversations are meant to be read in the clubs and affinity groups of the new Movement. The authors accompany us on a journey through modern revolutions, direct actions, anti-globalist counter summits, Freedom Schools, Zapatista cooperatives, Haymarket and Petrograd, Hanoi and Belgrade, 'intentional' communities, wildcat strikes, early Protestant communities, Native American democratic practices, the Workers' Solidarity Club of Youngstown, occupied factories, self-organized councils and soviets, the lives of forgotten revolutionaries, Quaker meetings, antiwar movements, and prison rebellions. Neglected and forgotten moments of interracial self-activity are brought to light. The book invites the attention of readers who believe that a better world, on the other side of capitalism and state bureaucracy, may indeed be possible.

Staughton Lynd taught American history at Spelman College and Yale University. He was director of Freedom Schools in the 1964 Mississpppi Freedom Summer. An early leader of the movement against the Vietnam war, he was blacklisted and unable to continue as an academic. He then became a lawyer, and in this capacity has assisted rank-and-file workers and prisoners for the past thirty years. He has written, edited, or co-edited with his wife Alice Lynd more than a dozen books.
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
James Nolan (September 25 at 7:00pm)
James Nolan reads from Perpetual Care.
Join City Lights in celebrating James Nolan's collection of short stories, Perpetual Care, winner of the 2007 Jefferson Press Prize.This début work of fiction introduces a writer of mordant dark humor, out of the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and John Kennedy Toole. Most of these comic yet often disturbing ... (more)stories are set in the author's native New Orleans, with its island mentality of denial. With wicked satire and moving lyricism, Perpetual Care presents an insider's view of this mysterious city, offering compelling insights on the eternal themes of sex, death, and regeneration.

James Nolan has published six books of poetry, translations, and essays. A regular contributor to Boulevard, his fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, and New Orleans Noir (Akashic Books), and his creative nonfiction has been featured in Utne Reader, North American Review, and The Washington Post.
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood (September 30 at 7:00pm)
Armistead Maupin reads from The Berlin Stories.
This event is free - tickets are required

Tickets available at the front counter of City Lights Bookstore

First published in the thirties, The Berlin Stories contains two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.

Isherwood ... (more)magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming with its avenues and cafes; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires--this was the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.

The Berlin Stories is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable Sally Bowles, whose misadventures were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am a Camera and by Liza Minnelli in Cabaret; Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee caught between the Nazis and the communists; plump Fraulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Buste might relieve her heart palpitations; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), perhaps the first major openly gay writer to be read extensively by a wider audience, was one of the most distinguished authors of the twentieth century. His literary friendships encompassed such writers as W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Stephen Spender, and Tennessee Williams.

Armistead Maupin is the author of nine novels, including the six-volume Tales of the City series, Maybe the Moon, The Night Listener and, most recently, Michael Tolliver Lives. Three miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three novels in the Tales series. The Night Listener became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.

There will be limited seating for this event. Advance tickets are only available at the front counter at City Lights. The tickets are free, but limited to 3 per person.
Event webpage
Interested: starcitywoman Added by CityLightsBooks.
Spain Rodriguez (October 2 at 7:00pm)
Spain Rodriguez reads from Che: A Graphic Biography.
Join legendary underground cartoonist
Spain Rodriguez
as he celebrates the release of

CHE: A Graphic Biography
Coauthored with Paul Buhle
published by Verso Books
A graphic biography of the most iconic revolutionary figure of the twentieth century

Since his death ... (more)in 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara has become a universally known revolutionary icon and political figure whose image is among the most recognizable in the world. This dramatic and extensively researched book breathes new life into his story, portraying his struggle through the medium of the underground political comic — one of the most prominent countercultural art forms since the 1960s. Spain Rodriguez's powerful artwork illuminates Che's life and the experiences that shaped him, from his motorcycle journey through Latin America, his rise to prominence as a leader in Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement, his travels in Africa, his involvement in the insurgency that led to his death in Bolivia, and his extraordinary legacy.



Spain Rodriguez (along with Robert Crumb) is one of the original members of Zap Comics and has a reputation as an outstanding political artist. He is the author of several graphic novels, including the highly acclaimed Nightmare Alley. His work is prominently featured in BLAB!, an annual comic anthology that has also featured Charles Burns, Mark Mothersbaugh, Daniel Clowes, and Chris Ware.

Paul Buhle is a senior lecturer of American civilization at Brown University, Providence. He writes for Tikkun and CNS among others, and has a long history of political and cultural journalism. His most recent title, Wobblies!, is a graphic novel history of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
Joe Meno & Arthur Nersesian (October 3 at 8:30pm)
Joe Meno & Arthur Nersesian reads from Demon in the Spring & The Swing Voter of Staten Island.
Join two powerhouse writers in an evening of burning prose !

Joe Meno reads from
Demon in the Spring
published by Akashic Books

Arthur Nersesian reads from
The Swing Voter of Staten Island
published by Akashic Books

Joe Meno is the best-selling author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, ... (more)The Boy Detective Fails, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender As Hellfire. He was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Arthur Nersesian's cult status (including The Fuck-Up, MTV/Pocket Books, which has sold over 100,000 copies) have focused on the tragicomedy of fin de siecle New York City. Now, in his boldest novel yet, he has broken through into a new landscape that at once fuses the real with the surreal, the psychological with the psychedelic. Actual characters from the '60s and '70s--Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Daniel Ellsberg, and the Berrigan Brothers--are but a few of the folks who populate this alternate version of American history.
Event webpage
Interested: starcitywoman, CityLightsBooks Added by CityLightsBooks.
Reverend Billy (October 5 at 5:00pm)
Reverend Billy reads from What Would Jesus Buy?: Fabulous Prayers in the Face of the Shopocalypse.
delivers a sermon on the literary mount titled:
The Shopocalypse - The Reverend Has To Wonder
We have big box bankruptcies, chain store retreats, credit card dessicration. Consumers are turning into citizens again. Little McFamilies have seen the light! They are building special bomb-shelters to protect ... (more)against this year's Christmas, which could be the Shopoclaypse's last chance to be remembered in history as a quality End-time...

Come on down and become one with the spirit. Join Reverend Billy on Oct 5, 5 PM in the poetry room at City Lights!

Reverend Billy first began preaching in Times Square and has since been incessantly spreading the word at major retail stores from San Francisco to New York City. He has led opposition to consumerism, chain stores, and malls that hurt communities. He has been regularly featured in the national media, most recently in the New York Times, and was arrested with great panache as he led prayers against consumerism in Disneyland. He is the founder of the Church of Stop Shopping and is regularly joined in his appearances by the Stop Shopping Choir. He has authored the books: What Would Jesus Buy? published by PublicAffairsBooks and What Should I Do If Reverend Billy's In My Store? published by New Press. He makes his home in New York City.
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (October 8 at 7:30pm)
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore reads from So Many Ways to Sleep Badly.
Join all of us at City Lights as we celebrate the release of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's latest work, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly.

Co-sponsored by Litquake and the Queer Cultural Center!

Call (415) 362-1901 for more information.
Event webpage
Added by CityLightsBooks.
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