Audacia Ray

I am the founder and director of the Red Umbrella Project (RedUP), where I work to amplify the voices of people involved in the sex trades through writing & theatre workshops, media spokesperson training, advocacy workshops, storytelling events & media production, and community organizing campaigns. I am executive producing the forthcoming feature documentary film The Red Umbrella Diaries, about seven RedUP members telling their stories.

My skills are rooted in years of experience as an activist, writer, and media maker. I am a former sex worker who started blogging in 2004, was an executive editor at the Utne Reader award-winning $pread magazine from 2005-2008, and I now edit the literary journal Prose & Lore: Memoir Stories About Sex Work, published twice a year. I'm the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration (Seal Press, 2007). I hosted and produced the video podcasts Live Girl Review and Naked City TV (for the Village Voice, 2008) and directed/produced the Feminist Porn Award-winning The Bi Apple (Adam & Eve Pictures, 2007).

I have spoken at many venues, from the New Museum to Hofstra University and many others. I also taught as an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University for three semesters, and did communications work at International Women’s Health Coalition and for the Global Network of Sex Work Projects. I have a BA from Eugene Lang College at the New School and a MA from Columbia University.