Ashley Ray-Harris

Moderator | Inside the Writers Room with P-VALLEY

Ashley Ray is a Los Angeles-based comedian, writer and pop culture critic by way of Rockford, IL (and Chicago). Her work explores the intersection between culture and the intimacies of race, gender, queerness, and sexuality. She studied the history of black television at Williams College, is a leading pop culture voice and is also the creator of the Badass Black Women's History Month Project. A frequent Tweeter and podcast guest, Ray's unique brand of off-puttingly black Black comedy have been covered in The Chicago Tribune, Vulture, and VoyageLA.

She worked at The Onion and performed with Clickhole Live from 2016-2018. Her newsletter, What Is Ashley Ray Tweeting About Now, was named "One of the Best 2020 Newsletters to Subscribe to That Will Keep You Informed and Entertained" by Marie Claire. She is also the host of TV, I Say, a pop culture podcast about TV. 

Ray has performed at festivals such as Limestone Comedy Festival, Milwaukee Comedy Festival, Pitchfork Music Fest, Cream City Comedy Fest, and the Chicago Women in Comedy Fest. She's performed at clubs, showcases, venues and Zoom shows across the country. In 2020, she co-edited Maria Bamford's new audiobook, You Are (A Comedy) Special. 

Her pop culture opinions, editorials, interviews and reviews have been published on The A.V. Club, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Vulture. She was in the 2017-2018 Open Television Writers Program. She developed the pilot, Dating the Zodiac and wrote Articulate, a semi-finalist in ColorCreative’s 2019 Teen Movie Contest.