FL Author Who Opened Banned Books Store Makes 2024 Time 100 List

GAINESVILLE, FL — A Florida author who recently opened a banned books-themed bookstore in the Sunshine State has been named to Time magazine’s 2024 Time 100, the publication’s annual list of the most influential people in the world.

Author Lauren Groff and her husband have co-founded The Lynx bookstore in Gainesville as a response to Florida laws that have led to rampant book banning in schools in recent years.

There were 33 attempts to ban or restrict books in the Sunshine State 2023, with 2,672 titles affected, Patch previously reported.

Florida is responsible for 72 percent of book bans in the United States, according to PEN America, a nonprofit advocacy group.

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“It’s really bad, and we were struggling with what we could do as individuals,” Groff told Publishers Weekly, adding that the store is named after a wildcat native to Florida.

“The lynx is ferocious, and we hope to be ferocious when it comes to book bans,” she said.

The store’s name is also “a bit of a pun, as a bookstore is a necessary nexus, where you find community with people who love what you love,” Groff said.

While The Lynx has already had its soft opening, it will hold its grand opening celebration on April 28, the day after national Independent Bookstore Day, according to the shop’s Facebook page.

Author Ann Patchett, who also owns a bookstore, Parnassus Books in Nashville, wrote a tribute to Groff and her work for Time.

“Her novels would have been enough. ‘The Vaster Wilds,’ ‘Matrix,’ ‘Fates and Furies’—flights of imagination and dives into history that keep readers turning pages late into the night. Her collection ‘Florida’ (my personal favorite) won the Story Prize,” Patchett wrote. “But Lauren Groff is more than a great writer, she’s also a great citizen, channeling her belief that everyone should be free to read the books they choose into The Lynx, her new bookstore in Gainesville, (Florida).

"When I heard the news, I wanted to stop her. I wanted to praise her. I wanted to tell her there will be days that being both a writer and a bookstore owner will feel like one job too many," Patchett added. "Just ask Louise Erdrich, Emma Straub, Judy Blume, Jeff Kinney. Ask me. But the joy of putting the right book into a customer’s hands will make up for everything. Once again, Lauren Groff is doing spectacular work.”