Sex Worker Literati November 5, 2009

The November 5th performance will be celebrating the Sex Blogger Calendar featuring some of the readers that were participants in last year's Speak Up workshop! The November 5 performance stars: Audacia Ray, Miss Calico, Megan Andelloux, Dylan Ryan, Jo Weldon, and Solitaire.

Jo Weldon is the Headmistress and Founder of the New York School of Burlesque. Internationally renowned as burlesque personality Jo Boobs, she’s rounder her heels on stages from Coney Island to Las Vegas. She’s the winner of such exotic titles as Best Bump N Grinder, Best Teacher and Mentor, and Biggest Cougar in Burlesque! She has worked with performers from Leonard Cohen to Spinal Tap, and has been featured on television shows from CBS Sunday Morning to Gossip Girl. Her book, The Pocket Book of Burlesque: A Backstage Guide, featuring a forward by Margaret Cho, is due to be released by HarperCollins in 2010.

Megan Andelloux works as a board certified sexologist and sexuality educator. She is the founder and director of The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, a non-profit sexuality organization in Rhode Island. She provides sexuality workshops for college and universities and trains medical schools how to create positive health care providers.

Dylan Ryan is a porn star, student, performance artist, sometimes-writer, dancer and all around ho. In her five-plus years as a sex worker, she has appeared in over 100 films and websites primarily in the genres of queer and fetish porn and was voted Heartthrob of the Year at the 2009 Feminist Porn Awards. A recent transplant to Toronto from San Francisco, where she did sexwork outreach and advocacy with the St. James Infirmary, Dylan has made her way to Canada and is finishing up the last year of her MSW at York University. Through her work has taken on a decidedly academic tone the last year, she is exploring writing outside the “box” and is currently working on an autoethnography/1st person narrative that explains how sex workers form identities as workers in a world where they are heavily stigmatized. A self-confessed Pink and White Productions groupie, she believes in hot, radical, empowered sexuality and lots of it and couldn’t live without high heels, chicken fingers, and rainy days.

Solitaire has been an exotic dancer for the past seven years, fulfilling an ambition she had held since childhood. She has danced in over 30 venues in and around London, UK. Entering the adult industry following a degree in journalism and jobs in financial and fashion media, she was nominated in the Stripper of the Year category in the Erotic Awards and later sat on the judging panel three years running. She is active in the political scene, fighting to prevent UK adult entertainment laws becoming stricter, and is a campaigning member of performers’ union Equity.

Miss Calico has dabbled in sex work for about four years now. She writes about the business on her blog [http://blog.misscalico.com/], and smut, when she is lucky enough to have material. Because she’s kinky, there’s lots about dominance, submission, and sadomasochism – especially as they relate to her jobs. Other common themes include feminism, sex worker rights and activism, polyamory and alt-sexuality cultures, photography and modeling, sewing and costume, and her never ending amazement that she is in New York City.

Audacia Ray is a media maker and activist who is passionate about sexual rights. Audacia is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition, an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University, and the co-host of Sex Worker Literati. She is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration. Audacia is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at $pread magazine for three years and is a co-founder of advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness. Dacia will be performing a selection from Media Whore, an in-progress solo performance piece.

David Henry Sterry is an author, performer, educator, activist, and a man who hasn’t worn matching socks in years. David is the author of 11 books, the first of which was published in 2001. Prior to becoming an author, David was a professional actor and screenwriter. His new anthology, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex, was recently featured on the front page of the Sunday New York Times book review. “Eye-opening, astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny… unpretentious and riveting — but also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.” His first memoir Chicken is being made into a TV series by Showtime.

Official Website: http://www.hoshookerscallgirlsrentboys.com/november-5-sex-worker-literati/