Lighthouse Bookshop

About

Lighthouse is a bookshop on West Nicolson Street, in the university quarter south of the Old Town. It is queer-owned and women-led, and describes itself as an activist, intersectional, feminist and antiracist space rather than a neutral one.

The stock runs to about ten thousand titles. The strengths are radical and Scottish politics, revolutionary history, intersectional feminism, environmentalism, LGBT+ writing, poetry and translated fiction, with children's books, crafts and cookery alongside. Staff will put together recommendations if you tell them what you are after.

Events run all year, usually one or two a week, plus reading groups. Two are fixtures: a Book Fringe programme that runs alongside the city's summer festival, and an annual Radical Book Fair.

Access has been thought about properly and written down. A portable ramp is available on request, most of the shop leaves about ninety centimetres to move in, there is a whiteboard at the till for written conversation, and seating is scattered through the rooms. Background music is not normally playing. A dog lives in the shop and can be kept off the floor if you would rather it were.