THE SECRETS READING

live from new york... its internet princess !

EDIT: SOLD OUT IN FOUR MINUTES ???

i’ll cut to the chase for everyone rushing to get a ticket: click here to secure your spot for my first live show in new york!!!!!

we completely sold out our first block of hundreds of tickets in the pre-sale for my paid subscribers (which was a totally insane experience that i never expected!!) so i have a feeling what we have left here will go really quick — i’m so sorry if you don’t manage to get one, but more events coming soon, i hope (fill out this google form if you want to see me in your city)!!! closer to the date of the show, i’ll be opening up my subscriber chat (the one on the substack app) so that people can make friends to go to the event together, potentially pass along tickets if they can’t make it, etc — i want to make sure that as many of you as possible can come out to SECRETS READING so we can all meet each other and, of course, listen to some incredible writing.

some of you might have no idea what i’m talking about yet, so with the boring stuff out of the way… i’m so grateful to announce SECRETS READING, a one-night-only experimental-format literary event with substack and the greatest lineup of readers i could ever have asked for:

terry nguyen

,

eliza mclamb

,

P.E. Moskowitz

,

Marlowe Granados

,

Mackenzie Thomas

, and Emmeline Clein.

as i’m sure some of you noticed, i’ve been on a bit of a break from writing on here — i’ve had to deal with some personal + health issues over the last few months that have at points really inhibited my daily functioning. i feel very lucky and grateful to be in a position where i could take a break to focus on getting better, and i feel even luckier that there was never a point where i felt at all worried that my audience wouldn’t understand what i was going through. i say it all the time, but i am so grateful for all of you, and the work i’m able to do here is one of the most meaningful parts of my life.

with that in mind, i wanted to celebrate our community and my return to new york with the biggest and most exciting event i could imagine. i asked 6 of my favourite writers and artists if they’d write original, never-before-seen essays for a one-night-only reading in a 150-year-old church that’s all about the stuff we’re usually not supposed to say out loud: secrets, shame, crushes, sexual neuroses, grudges, lapses of judgement, moments of infidelity, immorality, and everything else we’re too ashamed or too scared to say publicly. so much of my writing is about shame, guilt, isolation, confusion, a sort of struggling to place myself and others in the world — to figure out how we ought to be and what we owe to each other. to work on an event that celebrates that uncertainty and hopes to bring people together in that celebration is a dream come true.

each essay contains a real secret that our writers have never been able to write about before and wouldn’t attach their names to publicly. the essays will be anonymized and switched between the readers; each reader will read someone else’s essay out loud, and no one — them included — will know which is which. all our secrets will be out, but no one will know whose they are.

there’ll of course be an afterparty in the church once the readings are over … don’t tell anyone i told you, but a church organist may be playing madonna songs … i truly truly feel so lucky to have been able to make this a reality. i can’t wait to meet you and talk to you and celebrate shame and secrets and literature together. (by the way launching an event is so stressful and i’m so worried about making this whole process perfect that my whole body has been covered in sweat and vibrating for the last two full days but i am sitting next to my air conditioner and i think it’s all gonna be okay…!)

finally, i would love to hear about some of your secrets in the comments. we shall all be healed!

xoxo R