A little piece of Baghdad in the Bay..

There’s this street in Baghdad that has been the city’s literary center for centuries. Poets, authors, thinkers, and provocateurs have all come together on the winding Al-Mutanabbi street to exchange ideas and sell books for more than 800 years. But in 2007, the street was bombed. Many booksellers died, and hundreds of priceless books were destroyed. When that happened, one San Francisco bookstore owner took it upon himself to help out. Beau Beausoleil runs The Great Overland Book Company, in the Inner Sunset. He started the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, a growing group of local writers, artists, poets, and printers, who create awareness about the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street through print.

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