Prairie Lights (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Prairie Lights is an independent bookstore in downtown Iowa City, Iowa, founded in 1978, by Jim Harris. The store's original location was a 1,000 square foot space on South Linn Street. In 1982, Harris moved the store to an 11,000 square foot space on South Dubuque Street, which had been a coffee house that had in the 1930s hosted a local literary society and its guests, who included Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sherwood Anderson, E. E. Cummings and others. The store currently holds approximately 80,000 to 100,000 books, covering three and a half stories. The remaining half-story houses a coffee shop. Its facade, designed to resemble a human face, is a local landmark. Harris sold the store to longtime employee and poet Jan Weissmiller and the poet Jane Mead in December 2008.