Founded in 1955, with nearly 200 books in print, City Lights publishes cutting-edge fiction, poetry, memoirs, literary translations and books on vital social and political issues.

Scroll down for a selection of our new and notable titles, and take a look at our recent releases and our forthcoming titles!

ONLINE-ONLY DISCOUNT: City Lights Publications are always 30% off the retail price when you order from our website.

Imprints & series include:

Pocket Poets Series
Classics such as Howl and Other Poems and Lunch Poems, as well as books by Jack Kerouac, Anne Waldman, David Meltzer, Julio Cortázar, Philip Lamantia, Jacques Prevert, Pier Paolo Passolini, Tongo Eisen-Martin and many more.

Open Media Series
Committed to solidarity with social movements promoting greater freedom, justice, and democracy by publishing the most outspoken scholars, advocates, and dissidents of our time. Authors in the series include Howard Zinn, Angela Y. Davis, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Tim Wise, Henry A. Giroux, Todd Miller, and John Gibler.

City Lights Foundation
The Foundation's role is to advance deep literacy, which is not only the ability to read and write but fluency in the knowledge and skills that enable us to consciously shape our lives and the life of our community. Our San Francisco Poet Laureate Series is published by the Foundation, as well as memoirs, anthologies, and other nonfiction.

City Lights/Sister Spit
Queer-centric, feminist, irreverent books from artists across the U.S. Includes our New York Times bestselling book for kids, Rad American Women A-Z, and critically acclaimed books by Thomas Page McBee, Chinaka Hodge, Lenelle Moïse, Beth Lisick, Dia Felix, and Ali Liebegott.

Spotlight Series
In the tradition of the press's storied poetic origins, City Lights Spotlight hopes to shine a light on the wealth of innovative American poetry being written today using the cultural visibility of City Lights to bring their work to a wider audience. Authors include Norma Cole, Anselm Berrigan, Lisa Jarnot, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Julien Poirier, Elaine Kahn, Barbara Jane Reyes, and Will Alexander.

Featured Titles from City Lights Publishers

A Short History of Presidential Election Crises
(And How to Prevent the Next One)

Alan Hirsch

An urgent primer on what can be done to combat emerging threats to the core of U.S. Democracy––presidential elections.

The Promise

Silvina Ocampo

A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity.

Forgotten Journey

Silvina Ocampo

Delicately crafted, intensely visual, deeply personal stories explore the nature of memory, family ties, and the difficult imbalances of love.

Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman

Bob Kaufman, Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell

Collected for the first time, the complete surviving works of a major African-American Beat Surrealist poet. ––Recommended by Paul Yamazaki, head book buyer, City Lights Bookstore

No Fascist USA!
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today's Movements

Hilary Moore, James Tracy

"Smash fascism! Read this book!"––Tom Morello, songwriter and guitarist with Rage Against the Machine

Little Hill

Alli Warren

Award-winning poet explores new formal terrain in seven long poems against the violence of the present political moment.

Death Blossoms
Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience, Expanded Edition

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Profound meditations on life, death, freedom, family, and faith written by radical, Black journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, while he was awaiting his execution.

The Grave on the Wall

Brandon Shimoda

Winner of the 2020 PEN Open Book Award. A memoir and book of mourning, a grandson's attempt to reconcile his own uncontested citizenship with his grandfather's lifelong struggle.

United States of Distraction
Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It)

Mickey Huff, Nolan Higdon

A powerful critique of how manipulation of media gives rise to disinformation, intolerance, and divisiveness, and how we can fight back.

Surrealism
Inside the Magnetic Fields

Penelope Rosemont

A series of personal and historical encounters with surrealism from one of its foremost practitioners in the United States.

Deer Trails
San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 7

Kim Shuck

2019 NCIBA Golden Poppy Award Winner - Poetry - San Francisco's new poet laureate—a Native American and native San Franciscan—explores urban space and the natural world.

We the Resistance
Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States

Michael G. Long

A first-person history of nonviolent resistance in the U.S., from pre-Revolutionary America to the Trump years.

Violence
Humans in Dark Times

Natasha Lennard, Brad Evans

Interviews with leading thinkers on the crisis of violence in contemporary politics, history, media, and culture.

Torn from the World
A Guerrilla's Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico

John Gibler

The real-life story of a political insurgent who was disappeared and tortured by the Mexican Army and miraculously escaped to tell the tale.

Loaded
A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

"If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America,' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes."—Los Angeles Review of Books

I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us
An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa

John Gibler

Chosen as a Best Book of 2017 by Publishers Weekly!

Harrowing personal narratives describing how Mexican authorities disappeared, killed, and injured scores of students and others in a still-unsolved crime.