Becoming booksellers: 3 Long Islanders take leaps of faith and open stores

A neuroscientist, an aspiring court reporter, and a streaming service project manager.

These are not characters for a "walk-into-a-bar" joke, but rather, three people who changed their career trajectories in order to open independent bookstores on Long Island.

Catarina Lemos, of Global Language Reads in Port Jefferson, Krista Lochren, of Book & Mortar in Mount Sinai, and Jennifer McAuliffe, of Northport Books in Northport have all opened their shops in the past 12 months.

In separate interviews, they each discussed what drove them to start their businesses.

A change born of tragedy

Catarina Lemos, 45, was born in Portugal, but grew up in Germany. She came to the United States in 2007 to attend Duke University, and later received doctorate in neuroscience, studying at Duke, New York University and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts. She and her husband, Patrick, who works in IT, eventually moved back to Germany and Portugal.

"And then I got the postdoc position to come back here first in Massachusetts, and then I was at Stony Brook postdoc, and then I was at NYU again," she told Newsday. 

While living with her family in Brooklyn she started writing and self-publishing books with an aim of helping children explore science. Lemos even based the main character on her daughter, Alicia who was 4 years old at the time.

The series, "Alicia's Discoveries," explores scientific topics ranging from rainbows to black holes. Lemos still writes and self-publishes the books.

"And it was a lot of fun, and ... my daughter and I said, ‘You know one day, we'll have our own bookstore to sell the books," Lemos recalled.

She decided to follow through on that burst of career inspiration after tragedy struck the family. Her oldest son, Gabriel died at age 25 in 2023, prompting the family to move out of the city.

"Once you experience that, you think you should do all the things you want," she said.

Lemos' bookshop, Global Language Reads, on Main Street in Port Jefferson, opened Nov. 9. The store got its name using the initials of her son, Gabriel Lemos Rodrigues. She decided later to honor his memory by opening a second bookstore in Brooklyn.

Lemos described how instead of having as many books as possible in her store, she has an area in the middle that resembles "a living room."

"And that fact invites people in to sit and have a conversation, and this created this random community somehow," she said.

Finding her forte

Krista Lochren, 30, was excited to become a court reporter.

The Sound Beach resident received a bachelor's degree in communications, and tried her hand at marketing, doing social media for an organic food company but didn't enjoy it.

"It’s not my forte, so I was waitressing and I did it for so long that it just kind of became like my full-time thing," she said.

After stumbling across the credits for closed captioning on a television show, Lochren became "obsessed" with the idea of becoming a court stenographer.

In 2021, Lochren enrolled in a remote court reporting program at the Long Island Business Institute, but two years in, her school withdrew its accreditation, and closed down January 2024.

She said she sensed something was wrong when the school, which only had weeklong breaks in between sessions, didn't provide her class schedule during the over Christmas break, despite them supposedly starting soon.

The day after Christmas 2023, Lochren and her husband, Michael, were visiting a small bookstore in Washington Depot, Connecticut. Her future career prospects were on her mind.

Lochren's husband asked her what she really wanted to do. Open a bookstore, she answered.

On June 21, her store, Book & Mortar in Mount Sinai, opened for business.

While Book & Mortar and other independent bookstores face tough online competition from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, "Here it's cozy and we have book club and we're doing an embroidery workshop and there's a lot more, like face-to-face interaction, to offer people," Lochren said. 

From book lover to business owner

Bethpage resident Jennifer McAuliffe, 51, worked in publishing for about a decade before moving to the digital space, reaching director of operations for NBC Universal in Manhattan.

"I also wrote my own children’s books, but as I started to get older and evolve in sort of my life and my kids went off to school, I felt like I wanted to do something that was for me, that I was passionate about and just working in digital project management didn’t really fit the bill anymore," she said.

An avid reader, McAuliffe said that when her friends came to her with their problems, she would recommend books to help them.

"So I wanted to sort of open up a bookstore and suggest these books to people and have [a place for kids] to come," she said.

She opened Northport Books on July 15.

McAuliffe has partnered with other local Northport businesses, such as Italian restaurant La Porta, whose owner read a pizza-themed book in the bookstore’s children’s reading room, followed by a pizza party. This weekend, a member of the Northport Historical Society will be reading a Dr. Seuss book to visitors.

She also is in involved with two organization that focus on encouraging children to spend less time online, and have more face-to-face encounters.

"So those are things that I feel passionate about, and the bookstore was a way to sort of bring them all together," McAuliffe said.