Hosted by Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, October 1. Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
Stick around after the reading to dance and party with hos, hookers, and ne’er do wells!
21 and up – FREE

Sex Worker Literati is a free monthly performance series that features sex workers, former sex workers, and people with stories about the sex industry who will read, monologue, perform, and shimmy their ways into your hearts, minds, and naughty bits. In October we are celebrating the release of the New York Times acclaimed book Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys – all the performers are contributors. To get a taste of what the Sex Worker Literati is like, check out: videos of past performances (and subscribe to the video podcast on iTunes or Miro), pictures taken at the event, and be our fan on Facebook.

The October 1st performance stars: Sinnamon Love, Perry Brass, Shawna Kenney, Lauri Shaw, Melissa Petro, Jodi Sh. Doff, Zoe Hansen, Jennifer Blowdryer and Justin Jones

Zoe Hansen came to New York as a runaway teen in 1984, with two hundred dollars and a heroin habit. She lived in the Lower East Side when burnt out buildings were the norm and everyone went to Save The Robots and Danceteria. She entered the sex industry at 17 years old,& went on to become a phone girl, street ho, call girl, brothel worker and eventually successful madam. She continues to live in the East Village with her husband & child, where she is working on her memoir ‘My American Dream ~ Going Down in Gotham’.

Lauri Shaw skipped out on college and the American dream in favor of NYC’s colorful nudie bars of the late 90’s, right before Mayor Rudy Giuliani took his pickaxe to Times Square as we knew it. She never regretted her transfer to the world-famous School of Hard Knocks, and she graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Shawna Kenney is the author of Imposters and the award-winning memoir, I Was a Teenage Dominatrix. She’s an arts journalist and creative writing instructor currently living in Washington, DC.

Jodi Sh. Doff, aka Scarlett Fever, has written for BUST, Penthouse, Playgirl, Tear, Cosmopolitan; been included in Best American Erotica ‘95, Bearing Life, Between the Sheets & The Bust Guide to a New Girl Order. She’s one of the Three Naked Ladies, a weekly online series taking a behind the scenes peek at stripping then & now. There’s a memoir of her ten years in pre-Disney Times Square topless business in the works.

Sinnamon Love is an African American pornographic actress, fetish model, and glamour model. She is a single mother of three children. Love began performing in adult films in the early 1990s and has since appeared in around 200 movies. She directed the movie My Black Ass 4, which received nominations at the 2001 AVN Awards for Best Ethnic-Themed Video and Best Anal Sex Scene (Video). In 2003 she was on the cover of the first issue of the hip hop and pornography magazine Fish ’N Grits with hip hop star Redman. She has survived a bout with ovarian cancer, but lost an ovary and a fallopian tube.

Justin Jones is the pen name for a writer who currently splits his time between San Francisco and Big Sur, where he is furiously penning a scandalous book about his semi-scandalous life as an Olympic hopeful turned dot com drone turned traveling escort.

Melissa Petro is a researcher, writer, educator, feminist and former sex worker. She is published in Research for Sex Work, Post Road and the forthcoming anthology Sex Work Matters: Power and Intimacy in the Sex Industry. She earned an MFA from the New School in 2007 and is currently at work on a memoir.

Jennifer Blowdryer was delighted to meet other people with funny names when she moved to NYC in 1985. Spider Webb and Annie Sprinkle introduced her to the mutual exploitation hack erotica circuit, and she proudly launched Smut Fests at a lap dancing parlour in 1988. Read more of her stuff: www.86edstories.com.

Perry Brass is “A pioneer of gay literature” (ForeWord Magazine). He has published fourteen books. His newest is Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future. A finalist six times for the Lambda Literary Awards. Independent Publisher was also named a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award finalist. He has been included in twenty-five anthologies, including the groundbreaking Male Muse (1973)—the first-ever openly gay poetry anthology. He lives in the Bronx, New York, where he reads, writes, and watches the Hudson River.