City Lights Bookstore

City Lights Bookstore Our indie bookstore is located in Sylva, North Carolina -- a small Main Street town tucked in the heart of the southern Appalachian Mountains.
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Browse our thoughtful selection of new and used books, cards, maps, gifts and more in downtown Sylva, NC. Trade-in used books every Wednesday and Saturday, until 5 p.m. Buy books and ebooks locally, online at: http://www.citylightsnc.com/aff/clfb

We are excited to call a Friend Of The Festival thanks to their generous donation to the Blue Ridge Peace Fest! City Li...
08/24/2026

We are excited to call a Friend Of The Festival thanks to their generous donation to the Blue Ridge Peace Fest! City Lights is more than just a bookstore. While they have been a consistent source for new and used books for 41 years, they also carry maps, art, cards, gifts, and reading accessories of all kinds. City Lights’ goal is to share Appalachian Literature with the world and the world of good books with our community, and they have been accomplishing this goal for decades now. Give them a call at (828) 586-9499 or better yet go by and see them in person and if you’re lucky, then you may even get to meet the store’s resident kitty cat, Cedric!

We are still accepting donations for Peace Fest so if you want to get involved visit https://www.cdpjaxcountync.org/contribute/ to donate. We hope to see all of you there!!



THANK YOU to Kristin Entler & Andrew Mack for joining us yesterday to celebrate Entler’s debut poetry collection, OF WAT...
08/23/2026

THANK YOU to Kristin Entler & Andrew Mack for joining us yesterday to celebrate Entler’s debut poetry collection, OF WATER NEVER CEASING. We had another awesome crowd and appreciate everyone for showing up to support poetry and our good friends loblolly_press 🙌🏼

Signed copies are available at the front of the bookshop! We’ll be back for our last event of the month on Saturday at 3pm with Cathy Rigg and Kara Addy discussing Cathy’s novel, THAT WHICH BINDS US featuring music from Brasstown’s finest Ellie & Micah Goins.

08/23/2026

September Events listed here. ALL Events in September are in North Carolina
September 5, 2026 (3 pm) City Lights Bookstore
September 17, 2026 (5:30 pm) The Dogwood Shop [Note time change]
September 26, 2026 (4 pm) Fryemont Inn

I will be on the road in October to GA and South Carolina

Bunches of new mugs, notebooks, finger puppets, and more to prepare for a cozy fall season! ☕️ 🍁 And welcome back studen...
08/22/2026

Bunches of new mugs, notebooks, finger puppets, and more to prepare for a cozy fall season! ☕️ 🍁

And welcome back students! Stop by or call us if you need books or other supplies for the semester (and to see Cedric for stress relief). We hope to see you through you the school year.

📚 NEW AT CITY LIGHTS 📚
08/18/2026

📚 NEW AT CITY LIGHTS 📚

Kristin Entler will visit City Lights on Saturday, August 22nd at 3:00pm to share their new poetry collection OF WATER N...
08/16/2026

Kristin Entler will visit City Lights on Saturday, August 22nd at 3:00pm to share their new poetry collection OF WATER NEVER CEASING in conversation with Andrew Mack.

***To ensure the health and safety of everyone involved in this event, masks will be required for attendance and provided by City Lights***

OF WATER NEVER CEASING is a poetry collection written from within the lived realities of chronic illness, treatment, and survival. Across these poems, Kristin Entler traces how the body becomes a site of ongoing care, interruption, and endurance, and how daily life reshapes itself around medical systems, fatigue, and uncertainty.

Structured as a sustained sequence rather than a single arc, the collection moves through hospitals, exam rooms, homes, and moments of waiting. Entler writes with precision about diagnosis and treatment, but also about what happens outside the clinical frame: friendships strained by unpredictability, intimacy altered by pain, and the quiet labor of staying oriented to the present. The poems attend to bodily processes with clarity and restraint, resisting metaphor where it would soften the facts.

Throughout the book, water functions as both presence and necessity. Hydration, infusion, flooding, and depletion recur not as symbols of cleansing or rebirth, but as markers of survival. The title reflects the book’s insistence on continuation rather than cure. This is not a narrative of recovery, but of persistence within conditions that do not resolve.

THANK YOU to Jackson County native Tim Moore for a wonderful evening sharing his new book, MOUNTAIN RAMBLINGS: An Explor...
08/14/2026

THANK YOU to Jackson County native Tim Moore for a wonderful evening sharing his new book, MOUNTAIN RAMBLINGS: An Exploration of a Place and Its People, and to everyone who showed up to listen to Tim’s stories. We have signed copies waiting for you here!

No event this weekend but we’ll be back on August 22nd for poetry with Kristin Entler & Andrew Mack.

08/12/2026

Look what's coming up!!! I tell you, as an Appalachian author with a debut novel, being invited to have a book event City Lights Bookstore in Sylva is a dream! I'm overjoyed to have this one coming up, and do you see the lineup? I'll be joined by my friend Kara Sproles Addy (we first bonded as young professional women in Columbia, SC when we discovered our shared SW Virginia history), and I can't think of a better conversation partner. Plus Ellie Goins and her brother, Micah Goins, will be with us to play some special mountain music and to perform the ballad "War Song," written by my character Ben Grubb for his beloved Tess in the novel. We are going to have a time!

Come spend a beautiful August afternoon with us in the mountains of North Carolina as we celebrate our Appalachian heritage through story and song. I'd love to see you at City Lights!

Gold Leaf Literary Services
Turner Publishing Inc

THANK YOU to Spencer K.M. Brown for visiting us yesterday to share his fantastic new story collection, SLOW FIRE, and to...
08/09/2026

THANK YOU to Spencer K.M. Brown for visiting us yesterday to share his fantastic new story collection, SLOW FIRE, and to our trusted agent Alice Martin for joining the ticket and asking great questions. Some real good stuff about silence, fatherhood, and how children remind us to be full of wonder and delight experiencing the smallest things. Big shout out to Loblolly Press for bringing all of these great books into the world! We can’t wait for more. 📚

Signed copies of Spencer’s book are waiting for you here! He’ll be at Story Parlor in Asheville tonight, so if you’re around go see him.

We’ll be back in the Regional Room this Thursday for Jackson County native Timothy Moore’s new book, MOUNTAIN RAMBLINGS. We hope to see you there!

Address

3 East Jackson Street
Sylva, NC
28779

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 6pm
Sunday 10am - 3pm

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