The Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, bordering Central Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was a flurry of activity. Staff lugged cases of wine upstairs and placed branded hand fans on the pews. Rayne Fisher-Quann, the 22-year-old Canadian TikTokker turned writer of Internet Princess, a Substack newsletter, stood at the back of the church surveying in a poofy red dress and black sling-back heels. She apologetically abandoned set-up to speak with me.
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It’s two hours before Fisher-Quann’s first live show in New York City, organized for her paid subscribers in collaboration with Substack. The event conveniently brought together a roster of other Substack writers — Eliza McLamb, Mackenzie Thomas, Marlowe Granados, Terry Nguyen, and P.E. Moskowitz, as well as Dead Weight author Emmeline Cline — for a night of secrets, shame, and confession. Each writer, including Fisher-Quann, read another writer’s essay revealing a secret aiming for anonymity, although attendees described the writer of each essay as “obvious.” None of the essays were published before, or will ever be, ephemeral in a way that Fisher-Quann’s online work isn’t.
There’s not much privacy in a church, and with all the private rooms already in use for the event, the church’s point person offered us the organ pit. We walked up the stairs to a balcony overlooking the ornate gold apse and the dark wooden pews. She paused to photograph the view on her iPhone, and we sat down in two black folding chairs next to the large green organ.
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