About this Event
Please join us in person on Thursday, April 25th at 7:00pm central to help celebrate the release of Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale by Paul Yamazaki. Paul will be in conversation with Exile's own, Javier Ramirez! Paul is one of the most widely respected individuals in bookselling and it is a tremendous honor to host him. We are incredibly excited for Javier to be in conversation with Paul and we hope you will all join us for an amazing evening!
About Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale:
Reading the Room is Paul Yamazaki's love letter to the work of bookselling and an engaged life of the mind.
Over twenty-four hours, Paul Yamazaki leads us through the stacks of storied City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco; the care and prowess of his approach to book buying; his upbringing in a Japanese American family in Southern California and moving to San Francisco at the height of revolutionary foment; working with legendary figures in the book publishing industry like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sonny Mehta, and others; and his vision for the future of bookselling. Navigating building trust with readers and nurturing relationships across the literary industry, Yamazaki testifies to the value of generosity, sharing knowledge, and dialogue in a life devoted to books.
About Paul Yamazaki:
Paul Yamazaki has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers, the legendary San Francisco bookstore and publisher founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, for more than 50 years. A champion for national and global literature, writers, publishers, and independent bookstores, Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. He has mentored generations of booksellers across America.
About Javier Ramirez:
Hailing from Sacramento, California, Javier Ramirez has called Chicago home since 1995 and has been an indie bookseller for just as long. He's been a judge for the Kirkus Nonfiction Prize in 2017, the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019, the Andrew Carnegie Medals in Fiction and Nonfiction in 2021, the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2022, and a judge for the inaugural Cercador Prize for translated literature in 2023. He was the director of programming for the 2021 Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago and recently served as a judge for BINC's inaugural BincTank Business Incubator Program, which helps to support new BIPOC-owned retail bookselling businesses. He is a co-owner of Exile in Bookville.
About this event:
This is a free, in person event and registration is required. Please click on the link below to register for free. Paul will be happy to sign copies of his book after the event! Can't make it to the event? Signed copies will be available in store and online and we ship nationally!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Exile in Bookville, 410 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
