Upstander Intervention and De-Escalation Training

Join the PBF and ARE's LGBTQ+ Center for this ninety-minute workshop, designed for individuals who want to learn tactics to safely intervene when they see someone being harassed in public, but aren’t sure what to say – or how to make sure they don’t make things worse. Taught by PBF writer-in-residence and advocate Audacia Ray, this workshop supports participants in assessing public situations where harassment or hate violence appears to be a threat and creates space for folks to practice techniques to de-escalate situations while also considering their own and others’ context and social dynamics. While there is no cost to attend, we do ask that you RSVP to ensure we have enough seats! Light refreshments will be provided.

Please note: due to inclement weather, this event will be held in a second-story space that only has stair access. We apologize for the lack of accessibility for this particular event! If you have any accommodation needs, please reach out to the PBF at info@peterbulloughfoundation.org.

Thank you to First Bank and the Marion Park Lewis Foundation for the Arts for sponsoring this season's events!

About the Writer-in-Residence

Audacia Ray (they/them) is a bisexual and nonbinary writer and advocate whose creative work is intertwined with their political activism and experiences as a queer sex worker, survivor of violence, and keen observer of climate impacts on human and non-human beings. A longtime memoir and nonfiction writer, Audacia shifted their writing practice to fiction in 2021. They are a Tin House Workshop alumn with short stories published in The Hopper, Necessary Fiction, Litro Magazine, Superstition Review, and Stone Canoe, and they are at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. Their story “Don’t Look at the Owls” was nominated for a 2025 Best of the Net Award and their fiction explores queer surviving and thriving, friendship and connections among living and dead bio and chosen family, and trans and nonbinary entanglements with nature.

A dedicated polymath, Audacia played a key role in drafting the most-expansive statewide sex work decriminalization bill in the U.S., won a Feminist Porn Award for their directorial debut The Bi Apple, and hosted the monthly sex worker storytelling series Red Umbrella Diaries in NYC for five years. They were an editor of $pread magazine and the resulting best-of anthology published by Feminist Press in 2015. Their first book, Naked on the Internet, was published by Seal Press in 2007 and their essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival. 

Audacia currently serves as Interim Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), where for the last seven years they have worked to expand queer survivor’s access to resources beyond the criminal legal system. While at AVP, they have presented their research on anti-LGBTQ hate violence to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, run a citywide campaign to increase access to bathrooms for TGNC people, and developed community safety training for small LGBTQ groups who wish to build community rather than engage with police. 

Dacia has a MA in American Studies from Columbia University and a BA in Cultural Studies from the New School. They are an aspiring naturalist who identifies strongly with riparian zones in the places they love best: Brooklyn and the Catskill Mountains.