Paul Yamazaki has been a bookseller since 1970. He has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers for more than thirty years. Yamazaki has served on the board of directors of several literary and community arts organizations. Among them are the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), Small Press Distribution (SPD) and the Kearney Street Workshop (KSW). Yamazaki was once a member of the jury that selected the 21 writers that were included on the Granta Best Young American Writers 2 that was published in the spring of 2007. Yamazaki participated in The Translation Market, a world literature and translation summit as a panelist as well as being part of a delegation of American booksellers that was invited to attend the Beijing Book Fair. He has also participated at The Oxford Conference of the Book at the University of Mississippi and the Los Angeles Times Festival of the Book. City Lights Booksellers was named in 2010 the Publishers Weekly Bookseller of the Year.