It’s a February night in Los Angeles—still cool enough to know it’s winter, but warm enough to trick the jasmine into bloom. It’s in these clear evenings with warm winds and purple-pink sunsets that one starts to feel a little melancholic, sentimental for some kind of past, real or imagined. There are several institutions in this city that act as a direct portal to that past, walls and carpets stained with history, weird and unremodeled bathrooms and creaky staircases that allude to the decades that came before you. The historic Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Highland Park is one such institution, where on Tuesday night, beneath red velvety curtains,  Substack welcomed the quick-witted and the brave to compete in its first-ever Spelling Bee, hosted by writer, actress, and director Cazzie David (I Love You Forever, No One Asked For This: Essays). 

Writers, comedians, actors, and cultural commentators within LA’s creative vanguard came out to compete, including Nicole Richie, Jedidiah Jenkins, Jacqueline Novak, Brontez Purnell, Karley Sciortino, Jason Stewart, Drew Tarver, Alex Edelman, and Jamie Mizrahi. David says her and Substack selected competitors “based on who we thought would be fun, an eclectic and good mix of people.” It was a real good old-fashioned show, with the theatre's entrance stacked with M&Ms, lollipops, Twizzlers, chocolate bars, Reese's pieces, and Swedish fish (which were gone by the end of the night), and the theatre seemingly filled to near capacity, with attendees sitting on the floors, overflowing to side-seating, and occasionally heckling failing contestants. Matt Starr, who leads Creative Strategy & Events at Substack, kicked off the spelling bee with three rules: contestants could ask the audience for help, contestants got two strikes before they were out, and there were no winners. David, a long-time lover of games and activities, countered that the night was indeed “absolutely about winning.” 

The day before the bee, David launched her own substack with an essay titled “How to flop and get away with it” accompanied by an image of someone (presumably her) wearing mismatched socks. On the start of her own Substack, she says, “Well, Substack said, ‘If we're going to throw a spelling bee, you're going to need a Substack, okay?’” She smiles. “But it was not done by force. I learned of Substack years ago, and I was just too chicken to do it. It just feels like the right timing. I'm excited to have a place where I can reach people directly, and maybe get a little more casual with what I'm publishing.” Her new book of essays, Delusions, comes out next week via St. Martin’s Press. “It’s harrowing. I’m so nervous,” she says of the forthcoming release. “The worst part [of writing the book] was when I could no longer write it, and the best part was when I could continue to have it. Whenever anything happened to me in my life, or any new material came to me, I had a place to put it. And not having that, I feel, is the worst part.”

True to the nature of any contest, some came more prepared than others. 100 Boyfriends author and frontman of punk band The Younger Lovers, Brontez Purnell, prefaced his performance with a statement in which he declared, “I am a product of the Alabama public school system,” before sitting back down in his seat, without spelling out his word for the warmup round, which was “bidet.” Before the event started Richie could be overheard asking Purnell if he’s a good speller, to which he replied, “fuck no,” but despite his own uncertainty, he actually did alright, placing in fourth. He would meet his losing fate when asked to spell “Cincinnati.”

For Jacqueline Novak, writer, actor, and co-host of the podcast Poog that she shares with friend and fellow comedian Kate Berlant, this was her first time competing in a spelling bee. “In my mind,” she says of her preparation, “I threw a random word at myself, something I know how to spell, to see if it felt weird. I thought ‘vehicular’ in my head. And I went ‘V, E, H, I, C, U, L, A, R.’ And I told myself, ‘Yeah, it's not that bad.’ And then I took a shower, I put a little lip balm on and a little mascara, and I thought, I merely have to participate.” Novak would not go on to place at all in the bee, striking out on the word “hemorrhoid.” However, she did beat I Want Your Sex writer Karley Sciortino, who accused Novak of receiving easier words to spell than the other contestants. 

The three finalists came down to award-winning comedian Alex Edelman, DJ and How Long Gone co-host Jason Stewart, and New York Times bestselling author Jedidah Jenkins. Edelman, who had earlier proclaimed himself as “the ugliest person here,” left victorious, correctly spelling “Lamborghini” after Stewart failed to spell “Louboutin” and Jenkins incorrectly spelled “Bvlgari.” 

Even with a night of ruthless competition, contestants and audience members alike would end the evening spilled out onto York Blvd, shoulder-to-shoulder ordering pulled-pork sandwiches from the nearest food truck, laughing beneath the theatre’s neon marquis that wasn’t quite bright enough to drown out the illuminating light of the evening sky’s half moon. 

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Photographed by Paris Mumpower.