On April 28, Lauren Groff got out of bed at 3 a.m., shaken by a mix of anxiety and adrenaline.
According to the criteria of
It was opening day for The Lynx, Groff’s new bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, and everything that could go wrong was racing through his mind. So she drove to the store, where she felt reassured to see the approximately 7,000 books, a collection that she had helped choose.
“I like being there alone, because I’m surrounded by all my friends,” Groff, a best-selling novelist and three-time National Book Award finalist, said of the tomes.
A few hours later, she was no longer alone: by 10 a.m., about 100 people had gathered outside the store to watch her cut the ribbon. More than 3,000 people came that day for a series of readings by authors, folk music, live poetry composition and, of course, to buy books.
Groff and her husband, Clay Kallman, had been considering the idea of opening a bookstore in Gainesville for more than a decade, but it never seemed like the right time. Groff’s career as a writer was taking off and they had two young children. But last year, when book bans spiked in Florida, they decided their City needed an independent bookstore featuring titles that had been removed from libraries and classrooms.
“This store would probably still be a dream if it hadn’t been for the book bans,” said Groff, who has lived in Gainesville since 2006.
Last fall they found an old building downtown. They transformed it into a bookstore and event space, with a cozy reading corner in the children’s book section, a small cafe and large rolling display tables. For the front of the building they commissioned an 60-foot-long mural of a bobcat, a wildcat native to Florida.
Banned titles feature prominently in The Lynx. A large display near the front features books frequently challenged throughout the United States, including Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; and “Not All Boys Are Blue” by George M. Johnson.
Gainesville isn’t exactly a wasteland of books. It is home to the University of Florida and has a new Barnes & Noble bookstore.
But for some local authors, The Lynx already seems like something of an oasis.
“This place is not only very welcome, but necessary,” said Amy Hempel, a fiction writer who lives in Gainesville. More than 5,100 books were banned in Florida schools from July 2021 to December 2023, the highest number in the country, PEN America reported.
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