Red Umbrella Diaries: The Price of Love February 3, 2011

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

15% of the bar tab supports Speak Up! Media Training for Sex Workers

Starring The Screw Smart team (Rebecca Alvarez, Kira Manser, and J.D. Ackerman), Aimee Herman, and Billy Pelt:

Billy Pelt is the lead singer of Billy Pelt and The Plaid Panthers, a cuntry and cabaret band based in the East Village and is the founder of the Grendel Socialist Music Theatre. He’s 5’10”, 160, 6.5c, versatile, bisexual and great in groups. He can be found on Men4RentNow.com #220965.

Aimee Herman, a performance poet, has been featured on radio, at various poetry festivals, and erotic salons. She currently works as sections editor of erotica for Oysters & Chocolate. Aimee has facilitated numerous erotica writing classes and writing workshops that reconfigure the language of the body. She has been published by Cliterature Journal, InStereo Press, and can also be read in the anthologies, Oysters & Chocolate Erotic Stories of Every Flavor (NAL), Best Lesbian Love Stories (Alyson Books), and Best Women’s Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press). She is turned on by Canadians, women with curly hair, and peanut butter.

Rebecca Alvarez is a Brooklyn-to-Philadelphia transplant who totes around a panache for BDSM, a devotion to kindness, and a seat at her table for all sweaty freaks. She emerged as a fledgling sex educator in 2004 with the women owned-and-run sex shop Babeland in New York City. She went on to write a sex column for the Indypendent newspaper and the Sex Herald. Her love/disdain for the written word was tested during her tenure as a bookmaker/letterpresser with Booklyn and as the host of the NYC-based small-press reading series Cup and Pen. Currently, she works as one-third of the pleasure-based sex education collaborative ScrewSmart and a gynecological teaching associate while earning her dual masters degree in Social Work and Education in Human Sexuality at Widener University.

Kira Manser traces her sex education roots from Miko, a feminist run sex shop in Providence, to her current position as an educator at The Velvet Lily, a sex-positive shop in Philly. Besides being a retail goddess, she’s worked as a high school peer sex educator and in legal sex-work. Currently, she can be found working on a dual masters program in social work and education in human sexuality at Widener University. She brings home the bacon working as a Gynecological Teaching Associate (GTA) and is always excited to chat about her current labor of love, the sex education collaborative ScrewSmart.

J.D. Ackerman J.D. is a new media sex educator and sexuality writer with a Masters of Education in Human Sexuality. Not only is she a co-creator of ScrewSmart, Philly’s own pleasure-based sex education collective, she works online, creating a sex-positive community with HotMoviesForHer.com, a video-on-demand adult movie site specifically for women. With a focus on pleasure education and queer sexuality, J.D. spends her days making sure that every person is experiencing the most pleasure they can, as well as baking, sewing, crafting and pretty much doing anything else that involves her hands.

Official Website: http://www.redumbrellaproject.com/february-3-the-price-of-love/