“When’s the last time you’ve been to a reading that was actually about literature?” my writer friend asks me as we file into Montez Press Radio’s Chinatown headquarters for, well, another literary reading. “What do you mean?” I ask. “What are they normally about?” Tepidly, she responds, “Being a socialite?”

We are here for Casual Encounterz, a reading series started by writer and literary citizen Sammy Loren four years ago in LA. The series quickly gained cult-like popularity, taking over gallery spaces, backyards, parks, and even parking lots in Mexico City, London, and beyond.

Montez Press Radio’s Canal Street second-floor walkup was a fitting setting for the second of three recent New York Casual Encounterz. Recently hailed by The New York Times as a haven for the city’s underground arts scene, the roving reading series has already hosted two readings on the radio’s live web broadcast from various anonymous locales in Mexico City. MPR’s broadcast setup sits cozily across from a room with just a few folding chairs; as the space fills, there’s barely a spot to put down my paper cup of warm gin and sparkling artificial-cherry Liquid Death (a drink only a rogue sponsorship and a sweltering summer day could concoct). MPR co-founder Stacy Skolnik’s new novel The Ginny Suite is propped up against the wall and mannequins from recent vintage clothing sales also held in the space peek naked out of a closet to the left of where Tony Tulathimutte, Whitney Mallett, Mayada Ibrahim, and Lynne Tillman will read their work.

Loren started Casual Encounterz in an effort to spawn something as organic as the now-defunct “Casual Encounters” tab of Craigslist: a message board for personal ads that became an unexpected trove of experimental writing. Featuring seasoned authors alongside young artists and encouraging new and personal work, Casual Encounterz helps to decentralize and disrupt what has become—especially in New York—a hyperlocal literary circuit. Loren became inspired to start Casual Encounterz after attending DIY poetry workshops in Mexico City, which reminded him of the inclusive, spontaneous underground ska and punk shows of his youth in Kansas City. In a similar spirit, Casual Encounterz is as an establishment-evading space for people from all backgrounds, specifically from Loren’s favorite established authors and journalists to a younger more DIY crowd of “beatniks and instascammerz,” he says.

“Casual is just an extension of me, so it goes where I go,” says Loren. “You know how they say dictators start to collapse the distinction between themselves and the nation that they lead?” We laugh. But the series does blur lines—between what we see on the page and what we can expect to see in IRL cultural spaces. Casual has brought writers such as Colm Toibin, Constance Debré, Chris Kraus, Alexis Okeowo, Hedi El Kholti, Rachel Kushner out to read with emerging talent in independent spaces. In this way, the series engages both in the cultivation and the production of literary icons.

Loren’s “nation” has been cultivated in equal parts by literary word-of-mouth and Casual Encounterz’s Instagram page, which—due to it affinity for photos of bygone Hollywood starlets, tabloid-speak (“InstaSCAMMERS” hosting readings in “helLA”), and a memeing sensibility—has lent the series a down-to-earth charm not dissimilar to Loren’s own. Casual Encounterz’s guerrilla-style production sets it apart from other projects of its kind, allowing it to focus less on social status or scene-making and more on the topic at hand: quality literature.

At MPR, Tony Tulathimutte reads a short story from forthcoming collection Rejection—a version that he remarks had been considered “too dirty” for The Paris Review. Whitney Mallett, founding editor and titular Whitney of the Whitney Review of New Writing, reads an essay on group-chat gossip—“I guess it’s personal,” she says by way of introduction, sunglasses drawn slyly over her eyes. Translator and editor Mayada Ibrahim reads a story by Sudanese poet Najlaa Eltom that she’s just translated from Arabic. The crowd is rapt, and for a moment the scene recalls a college lecture more than a social gathering whose flier could be found on Instagram.

Lynne Tillman, whose work in the ’80s and ’90s helped to define the downtown New York art scene, takes the stage to end the night with a brilliant new story. It’s quiet in the room; it’s a master class. I notice a pair of girls sitting attentively on the floor in front of me, their legs folded under their skirts. They’re taking—and passing—notes.

After this moment of magic, the scene is returned to a relatively flashy party—beers are raided from the minifridge, photos are meticulously posed and posted. “Sometimes we get a little bit distracted by being in a scene,” Archway Editions editor Naomi Falk tells me. But the writers’ words reverberate through the space, archived by the radio for review later. I turn to Loren for comment: “The hot kids and scenes and parties are fun, but in the end, what drives CE is its faith in literature to save both spirit and soul,” he says. “That should be on my gravestone.”