Melissa Petro is a freelance writer living in New York. She has written for The Huffington Post, Salon, The Frisky, The Gloss, Reality Check, Rumpus.net, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor at xoJane and was a guest blogger at Bitch Magazine, where she authored a column critically analyzing representations of sex work in the media. She teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers Workshop and for Red Umbrella Project, an organization that empowers sex workers to represent themselves in the media.