The National Book Foundation is honoring Paul Yamazaki, the principal buyer at legendary San Francisco bookseller and publisher City Lights, with its lifetime achievement award.
Yamazaki will receive the 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community at the National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 15, the foundation announced in a news release.
Yamazaki was hired as a part-time bookseller at City Lights, the retailer founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, in 1970. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said he got the job while serving time in jail for protesting the Vietnam War.
His friend Francis Oka worked for City Lights and asked the store’s management to hire him so his jail sentence would be cut short. “They had no idea who the fuck I was,” Yamazaki told the newspaper. “All they knew was that Francis recommended me. It’s something that I fell into. I was hired while I was still in jail.”
David Steinberger, the foundation’s chair of the board of directors, praised Yamazaki for his “irreplaceable, culture-shifting impact on bookselling, independent bookstores, and publishing at large.”
Yamazaki is the 19th winner of the Literarian Award, first given in 2005 to Ferlinghetti. Other past winners include Maya Angelou, James Patterson, and Nancy Pearl.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
