Garrison Keillor Photo Credit: Robin Platzer/Twin Images

GARRISON KEILLOR: It’s my honor to introduce for the purpose of introducing somebody else a woman of letters who has written just about everything that a person can write. She’s written poems and fiction. She has written plays, plays that are actually produced. She’s written screen plays that are actually produced, “Fresh Kill,” and has written fiction. In fact, she has sat in a dark room, as many of you are sitting here tonight, and waited for her name to be announced as a nominee for the National Book Awards. Unfortunately, it was not a book with a really award winning title. It was a great book but Dogeaters? Gangster of Love. Better title. Please welcome Jessica Hagedorn. [Applause]

JESSICA HAGEDORN: He’s a funny man. That’s Minnesota for you. Good evening, everyone. This year, the National Book Foundation decided to create the Literarian Award in order to recognize and honor the people who have dedicated their lives to loving, nurturing, publishing and making great literature available to a wider audience in America. I feel an enormous sense of hometown pride in introducing tonight’s recipient of this award. He is a beloved poet and prolific author, a visionary publisher, and after all these years, still the hippest and coolest bookseller around. [Applause]

Jessica Hagedorn Photo Credit: Robin Platzer/Twin Images

Yeah. Coney Island of the Mind his best known, best selling collection of poetry is considered a modern classic. He founded City Lights, the legendary San Francisco bookstore in 1953 with Peter Martin. Soon after, he launched City Lights Publishing House. His courageous publication and defense of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl led to his arrest on obscenity charges. The trial and his subsequent acquittal brought national attention to the San Francisco renaissance and the literary movement known as the Beats. As you can read in the program, this historic First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work.

I was 15 years old, fresh off the boat from the Philippines, when the poet, Kenneth Rexroth, took me on my first outing to City Lights in North Beach, a glamorous, grown up, and to my feverish teenage mind, delightfully dangerous destination. I’ll never forget that it was close to midnight, yet the cozy, colorful bookstore was humming with activity. Scruffy bohemian types lounged about downstairs, browsing through the paperback books and the latest issues of Umbra and Evergreen Review. The friendly staff didn’t seem to feel the need to pressure anyone into buying. Poetry by Lorca, Neruda, Mayakovsky, Apollinaire, plays by Samuel Beckett and LeRoy Jones, novels by Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey and James Baldwin, William Burroughs. Quite a boys’ club, right?

Teenage me was in heaven. After that first night, I kept going back, sometimes alone or with one or two likeminded book-loving teenage rebel pals. City Lights was our haven, a sort of funky alternative school for kids like us who dreamed of becoming writers and artists. The welcoming beautiful energy in this independent unpretentious first class bookstore has much to do with the poet and activist who is its public face. To this day, City Lights remains a vibrant San Francisco literary landmark and a Mecca for writers and readers from all over the world. Thanks to his unflagging vision and generous open spirit, the Press continues to thrive, publishing a remarkable list of cutting edge authors while keeping many hard-to-find books in print.

Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation, it gives me great pleasure to present the first Literarian Award for outstanding service to the American literary community to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

[Applause]