@smokey I run a reading series called First Tuesdays in my neighborhood. I've been doing it now for about 6 or 7 years, but I used to attend the series before that. (It is, in fact, as far as I know, the oldest running reading series in Queens, about 12 years.) And one of the things that kept me coming back at that time was that, almost every month, at least one person who had never read their work in public got up to read and the group was just so warm and welcoming. We don't get quite so many brand new readers anymore, but it does happen, and I am happy to say that the sense of community that I valued back then has only grown. We are certainly not as disruptive/iconoclastic as the Lebanese writer in the article, but I like to think First Tuesdays does a similar--if perhaps more subtle, nuanced, and quiet--kind of work.