Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–2021) was born in Yonkers, New York, and became one of the defining figures of the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation. In 1953 he co-founded City Lights Books in San Francisco, the first all-paperback bookstore in the United States, which became a center of avant-garde publishing and culture. His publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges; his acquittal was a landmark victory for free speech. His own collection A Coney Island of the Mind (City Lights, 1958) has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling poetry collections in American history. He received the National Book Award's Literarian Award in 2005.