The Washington Post reports that the stolen cutout of Langston Hughes as a busboy was taken by Thomas Sayers Ellis, who teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

The Washington Post writes:

“I took it,” Thomas Sayers Ellis told us Tuesday. The Washington native…said he grabbed the lifesize photo of Hughes as a protest — because he doesn’t think the restaurant/performance space pays poets fairly for their public readings.

Should Busboys pay poets more than they do now?

“You would think that an establishment that makes as much money as Busboys would have set in place a reading series with a respectful pay scale for writers,” said Ellis. The restaurant gives poets a venue, but also profits from their talent. The literary community, he says, doesn’t know if Busboys is the “good guys or the bad guys.”

Although the lesser known poets are probably happy to appear on the stage at Busboys, more established poets expect large fees for their appearance. If the writer is bringing in audience (and the audience is spending money), wouldn’t it make sense to share a percentage of the revenue with the writers who drew the crowd in the first place?