Interview with a Bookstore: San Francisco's historic City Lights

Lost ducks, beatniks, and sex in the storeroom: we kick off a new series exploring iconic bookstores with one of America’s most famous, City Lights – in partnership with Literary Hub

Interview with a Bookstore from Literary Hub is part of the Guardian Books Network

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet laureate of Coney Island, cofounder of perhaps America’s most famous bookstore, wrote of his adopted city:

The changing light / at San Francisco / is none of your East Coast light

none of your / pearly light of Paris

A young woman surreptitiously placed her father’s ashes in various nooks and crannies throughout our poetry room

Some German tourists said “Excuse me, did you know there is a duck in here?” No, no I did not know.

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