WARREN, Pa. – “When I went to make a cup of coffee one day, I couldn’t find the coffee,” said Jamestown native Michael Yahn, co-owner of Authors Books & Music in Warren, Pa. “Some things just take priority.”

Yahn was referring to the stacks of books and records surrounding him, among which the coffee had been misplaced that day.

“Our main goal is just generally to promote literacy as an art form,” Yahn said of Authors Books & Music, which he co-owns with his wife Shannon.

The Yahns celebrated the store’s sixth anniversary in November.

Shannon Yahn, originally from Pittsburgh but raised in the Warren area, had been working in real estate and bought an estate filled with movie posters and books. It was a jackpot for the couple who met through a mutual friend. They spent their first date at a local garage sale and eventually married.

“We’d both been book lovers,” Michael says, and notes that their shared love of music, combined with a fondness for the general aesthetic of the literary life, led them to a mutual goal of one day owning their own book store. “The type of place we’d want to go to,” he describes their dream-turned-reality from behind the cashwrap at their current location, 227 Liberty Street in downtown Warren.

The day of the coffee incident came after Shannon’s original purchase of the media-filled estate, which led the couple to their first taste of the book merchant’s life. Michael began auctioning the memorabilia on eBay and said things started going well so well that he told Shannon, “You need to quit real estate.”

They were on their way.

From there, the pair began renting spots in antique shops and second-hand stores, like the Salamanca Antique Mall and the Allegheny Book Mart. Eventually, their rummaging hobby grew so hearty as to require, one might say, a room of one’s own. And Liberty Street it was.

Authors Books & Music opened its doors in 2010, celebrating its sixth anniversary in November. While the store is mostly an outlet for used books, records, posters, and the work of local authors, there is another aspect of the store that should excite readers, writers and listeners alike, Yahn said.

The store hosts an open read night each month, stopping only during the holiday season and starting again soon after each new year. Anyone who writes and wants to share their material is invited to take a spot during the traditional open mic format of the event, as well as to those interested in reading favorite pieces from other writers, or those simply looking to enjoy the community with local writers and literary enthusiasts.

Yahn said he followed a convoluted path to calling himself a writer, spending time at Jamestown Community College and studying psychology and block printing before having articles printed in the ’90s, with his article on collecting Marx Brothers albums landing the cover of an issue of Goldmine in 1996. For someone who says he “wasn’t the teacher’s favorite” in school, it seemed he’d found his niche.

“The main struggle is for people to know we’re here,” Yahn said.

Even with their presence on Facebook, their website, and the ever-present paper mache face of Poe gazing out on their sidewalk signage, he said there is always the problem of driving business for a brick-and-mortar bookseller. What he aims to provide for the community with his store is both the physical products with which he and Shannon fell in love, as well as a place to promote literacy and local authors. They want to publish the work of those authors and function as the hub of the local writing and reading community.

Open read nights at Authors will resume in February 2016 and will be held on the first Tuesday of each month from 6-8 p.m. until around October, when the Yahns will break again for the holidays. Goals for the future include more book signings, events and discussion groups this spring and work is underway in the hopes of scheduling an appearance by Anne Serling, daughter of Rod Serling famous for writing and narrating the 1959 series “The Twilight Zone.”