In 1982, Harris moved the store to an 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) space on South Dubuque Street, which had been a coffee house that had in the 1930s hosted a local literary society and its guests, who included Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sherwood Anderson, E. E. Cummings and others.

Seven Nobel prize winners have also had events at the store: Seamus Heaney, Czesław Miłosz, Derek Walcott, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, and J. M.

He visited the store after using Prairie Lights as an example of small businesses struggling to pay for health care coverage for their employees.

[5] WSUI in Iowa City broadcast "Live from Prairie Lights", a series of readings by authors appearing at the store, for 18 years.

[7] In October 2010, the University of Iowa college radio station KRUI-FM began broadcasting "Live from Prairie Lights.