Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Thursday, September 3. Doors at 7 pm, reading from 8-10
21 and up – FREE
Portion of proceeds from the bar supports $pread Magazine

Sex Worker Literati is a new 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 September we celebrate $pread, a quarterly magazine by an for sex workers – all of the performers have contributed to or been featured in the magazine. 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 September 3rd performance stars: Zak Smith, Ignacio Rivera, Melissa Gira, Essence Revealed, Christina Cicchelli, and Gerry Visco.

Zak Smith is an artist and occasional porn actor whose paintings and drawings are held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. We Did Porn— a book including drawings and stories about his experiences working in the adult film industry—is his third book and his first to include writing. He lives and works in Los Angeles. Zak will read from his new book We Did Porn.

Ignacio Rivera is a Queer, gender fluid, Trans- Entity, Black Boricua performance artist, lecturer/trainer, activist, new filmmaker, sex worker and self-proclaimed sex educator.

Ignacio is the founder of Poly Patao Productions. P3 is dedicated to producing sex-positive workshops, performance pieces, films, play parties, panel discussions, social/political groups and educational opportunities that are specially geared toward queer women, transgender, multi-gender, gender-queer, gender non-conforming and gender variant people of color. Ignacio is also one of the founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice, a progressive non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.

Melissa Gira (“jee-rha”) Grant is a writer, and also an educator and artist working in sex & technology. She’s a contributor to Gawker and BlackBook, and a columnist for $pread. Her work has also appeared online at Slate, The Frisky. and RH Reality Check, and in print in Make:, Best Sex Writing 2008 (Cleis Press) and Dirty Girls (Seal Press).

Essence Revealed’s yearbook quote: “I’ll become a lawyer or an actress, whichever happens first.”  She forgot to include being a stripper.  Stripping in clubs from Manhattan to Vegas, enabled Essence to build her acting career.

After graduating N.Y.U’s Tisch School of the Arts (BFA Acting) & Steinhardt School of Education (M.A. Ed. Theater), Essence appeared on N.Y. stages: New York Theater Workshop, Here, The Present Company Theater, The Ohio Theater, P.S. 122 as well as the W.O.W. Café Theater. Essence is currently developing her memoir of stripping secretly: ESSENCE REVEALED with Diana Amsterdam of The Drama Center.

Under the alias Simone Valentino, Christina Cicchelli has received an AVN nomination for Best Actress for her role in Afrodite Superstar and also won Best New Starlet at the Feminist Porn Awards in 2007 for her role in The Bi Apple.

Christina is now a columnist for $pread Magazine and dishes weekly perversions on her blog, A Fantastic Nightmare. She is also a Professional Fetish Coach for those seeking kinky inspiration in the bedroom.

Gerry Visco is illegally blonde. A writer, performer, photographer, and radio show host on WKCR FM, she regularly covers parties and the arts for New York Press and has also published stories and photographs in The Village Voice, Gawker, the New York Sun, New York Magazine, Fit Yoga, Beyond Race, New York Blade Gay City News, $pread Magazine,  and other publications in print and online. She’s writing an autobiographical book about her colorful life as muse, FIT student, actor, fag hag, rent girl, and disco diva in the gritty world of New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.