Audacia Ray

I found $pread magazine at a time in my life when I had been doing sex work a while and was really isolated - I had one real life friend who also worked, and I had started blogging about the work so I could have some damn conversations about this weird secret world I found myself immersed in. I had the compulsion to share my experiences, but I had no idea what it would look like if I did that alongside other people who traded sex. And then I saw a call for submissions to $pread. And I wrote to them. And then I started showing up to things, kinda this awkward, slightly desperate, shy girl. I remember the first couple of meetings I went to, and they were all serious and talking about the magazine, and I really wanted to derail it and talk about WTF I was going through with sex work, and I was so amazed that these people were sex workers - I mean, they were nice! They were doing a cool thing! They didn’t look like the kind of people who would be sex workers! (I had a fucked up opinion of myself at the time and just hadn’t met any other sex workers). 

$pread is the project that made me obsessed with storytelling and the power that it has for us individually and as a community. We need more stories about our experiences in the sex trades - stories that conflict with each other, stories that represent individual perspectives and aren’t generalized caricatures, stories that are real and complex and carry trauma in them and have the power to heal (or not). I really do believe that storytelling is the building block of social change, and that’s been a major impetus for the development of the Red Umbrella Project and our programs over the last few years.

Which is all a long way of saying that I’m really excited to be presenting the book pictured above: Pros(e). It’s a literary journal, with sixteen true stories written by eleven people who participated in RedUP’s first eight-week long Becoming Writers Workshop in NYC this fall. Melissa Petro taught the class and edited the book, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to do two semesters of the class each year, with two issues of the journal alongside it (all, of course, dependent on funding).

The book officially comes out next Thursday, December 6th at the Red Umbrella Diaries in NYC. But you can pre-order print copies of it here, and ebooks will be available soon, too.

Related: anyone interested in reviewing Pros(e) on your tumblr, amazon, goodreads, or an internet place of your choosing? Inbox me if you are, and I can get you a PDF ASAP or mail a hardcopy at the end of next week. 

The book, thanks to our Kickstarter backers, is done, printed, and en route to NYC!

(via Cooking in Heels: A Memoir Cookbook – by Ceyenne Doroshow)

In Cooking in Heels, Ceyenne Doroshow offers up 40 Southern-style favorites with a Caribbean twist. As a transgender woman who was inspired to write her book while serving prison time for a prostitution conviction, Ceyenne might not seem like the most likely representative of home cooked family values. But her book, which is peppered with good humor and begins with the story of her life, shows that food and love are the ties that bind, and family is what you make it.

If you want to be notified when the book goes on sale online, join our mailing list and check the “Cooking in Heels” box when it asks which list you want to be on.

Publication Date: October 5, 2012
112 pages, soft bound, full color with photos by Stacie Joy
Published by Red Umbrella Project, New York
Soft cover retail price: $17.99 – ISBN: 978-0-9882596-0-7
Ebook retail price: $9.99 – ISBN: 978-0-9882596-1-4

Cooking in Heels Book Release Party: Thursday, October 4th, 8 – 10 pm at Happy Ending Lounge (302 Broome Street, between Eldridge and Forsyth) in NYC. This is the first time books will be available! Ceyenne and friends will tell stories of food and survival, and the author will sign books. PLUS, there will be free food, cooked by the lady herself. Get there early to make sure you get some!

harmreduction:

Check out this new anti-discrimination campaign from DC!

The Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) is seeking participants for the fourth annual Speak Up! Media Training Intensive Workshop. The workshop was developed for people with experience in the sex trades who want to speak publicly – in mainstream and community produced media – about their experiences in the sex trades and offer their political perspective on issues that affect their communities. The workshop is open to people who have entered the sex trade by choice, circumstance, or coercion, and is designed to support each participant to speak up from their own perspective and on issues that matter to them.

Our seminar teaches people in the sex industry to create strategic responses to media and public events. Participants learn to evaluate press requests, create talking points and stick to them, decide on the best message for the audience, and hold journalists to ethical standards. We cover the skills needed for staying on message while being interviewed, producing press releases and letters to the editor, developing media campaigns, evaluate the risks and rewards of being “out,” and more.

The workshop provides media skills development for individuals with varying goals and experiences. Some participants are writers and want to be able to market themselves and their work better, some work with nonprofit organizations that want to get more media attention for their work on sex workers’ rights, while others have had negative experiences with the media in the past and want to be better prepared, and still others are members of communities that don’t often have a place at the table, even within the sex workers’ rights movement. We are committed to diversity, both in terms of demographics and experiences.

Deadline to apply is Thursday, September 13 at 10 pm EST. Full details and application here.

(Red Umbrella Diaries - September 6- New Beginnings)

Hosted and Curated by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

Join us for a night of stories on new beginnings from the newest members of team RedUp 

Niesha Davis is a writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in: Time Out Amsterdam Magazine, Bust Magazine, and $pread Magazine to name a few.In the past she has written for Bust.com and bed-stuy.patch.com. She is a graduate of Eugene Lang College The New School where she studied Theater and Literary Studies. She is thrilled to be a part of the Red Umbrella team.

Savannah Hornback: Ms Hornback begin her professional career in the field of HIV/AIDS in 2004 as a peer educator , since then she has worked at many different levels of HIV prevention including extensive work with a number of
marginalized communities including but not limited to street based sex workers, IDU and substance abuse, mental health population as well as the homeless population. Ms. Hornback has become well known within the non-profit arena working in a number of capacities including clinical case management, program development and supervision and oversight of New York State-Department Of Health HHS and CDC funded grants targeting the Transgender and Gender Non-conforming populations. Currently as a affluent member of the community Ms. Hornback is involved with influencing policy at both the state and National Levels that affect/effect the community at large. As a woman of transgender experience and a survivor Ms Hornback is honored to have the chance to give back to her community.

Melissa Petro is a freelance writer and experienced teacher with two Masters degrees including an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School. She has written for Salon, The Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Guardian and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor at xoJane and guest authored a column on sex work at the feminist blog, Bitch Magazine.

Daisy McCloud is a native New Yorker who has participated in many Red Umbrella Project programs including Speak Up! media and legislative trainings and December 17 (International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers). In 2012 she also co-facilitated the legislative trainings, and joined Audacia along with members of the sex worker community in Washington DC for the International AIDS Conference.  She has been working with the Red Umbrella Project and the Sex Workers Project (at Urban Justice Center) on the “No Condoms as Evidence” bill including speaking about it at the legislative trainings, meeting with elected officials in their local offices, and going up to Albany for a lobby day this past spring. Daisy McCloud is the project coordinator for one of Red Umbrella’s newest campaigns, “Clear My Name”, that is set to start this fall. She is currently active in the sexy trade industry, as well as being a student and a mother of two girls.

Today is the final day to apply for the Red Umbrella Project’s Becoming Writers workshop in NYC, which is FREE and runs for eight weeks this fall. The deadline is August 9th at 10 pm. The class is designed for people with experience in the sex trades.

Becoming Writers intended for both experienced and first-time writers and will cover the fundamentals of memoir writing. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to showcase their work in a reading at the Red Umbrella Diaries on December 6, 2012 and in a publication (both hard copy and ebook) that includes the writing of class participants.

Classes will meet for three hours, weekly, on Tuesday evenings at the New School in Manhattan (exact location will be made available to accepted participants) and will be facilitated by Melissa Petro, published writer, experienced teacher and former sex worker, who has written extensively about her experiences as a stripper and call girl for places like Salon, Daily Beast, Bitch Magazine, xoJane, Rumpus.net, and elsewhere.

Classes begin with an all day seminar in Brooklyn on Sunday, September 2 (from 11 am to 4 pm, lunch provided). We will then meet regularly starting Tuesday, September 4 and conclude Tuesday, October 30 (there will be no class on Tuesday, October 2). Snacks and beverages will be available at all class sessions. We are able to provide roundtrip MetroCards to some participants as well as computers to those who do not have access to a computer to write on – please indicate on your application if this support would make the course more accessible to you.

Full info and the application are available here.

I have a new dog in my life. Newcomer Jake (the tricolor beagle) and my little Ziggy (beagle/dachshund) are so far getting along famously. Mostly they have been galloping around the apartment and playing. But Jake is also learning to sit, so far with great success. And apparently he also makes a weird little smile just like Ziggy does.