Desire
A Residence 11 Summit on Intimacy & Relationships
Residence 11 celebrates the future of sensuality, romance, intimacy, and loving in a new age of human communication.
Buy ticketsEvent Details
April 13 & 14
Jersey City • Sip Studios
140 Sip Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Buy ticketsDesire Summit Sizzle Reel
Los Angeles 2024
Sponsors & Partners
Workshops and Topics for Desire East 2024
Saturday
Morning Session
Finding your Freedom with Molly Roden Winter
Erotic Experimentation at Play Parties with Effy Blue
Lingerie Fashion Show
Social Lunch
Book Signings & Vendors
Afternoon Session
Exploring Erotica Genres & Your Erotic Identity with Dr. J (Donna Jennings, PhD), Kristina Forest, Alexis Daria, Anne Shade, Lucy Eden
Sexuality & Menopause with Lasara Firefox Allen
Love, AI & Sex Robots with Samantha Cole
Sex Toy Show & Tell with Dirty Lola
Evening
Cocktail Hour
Live Musical Comedy Act with Angela Sharp
Raffle Basket Giveaways
Sunday
Morning Session
Overthinking Your Sex Life with Allison Raskin
Bringing BDSM Home with Olivia Troy
Social Lunch
Book Signings & Vendors
Afternoon Session
Open Relationships with Danielle of Openly Committed
A Female-Led Sex Industry with Maitland Ward
Ink & Intimacy with JRose
Evening
Closing Reception
Live Music with Lily Desmond
Raffle Basket Giveaways
Last Event's Swag Bag
Desire East 2023:
Experimentation
The focus of April's east coast event will be Experimentation.
This April, we're really stepping it up.
During our inaugural event in Los Angeles, the Desire Summit centered on speakers and discussions. It was wonderful. BUT during Jersey City two-day experience will be bringing new levels of networking and interactive programming to expand opportunities to connect with one another and really come away with new learnings.
Desire East April 2024 will take a deep dive into the theme of Experimentation through speakers, workshops, exercises, round tables, and demonstrations. We will cover topics across cuisine, role play, releasing trauma, exploring fantasies, activism, guiding your partner, immersive stories, sensual music, and more.
The Desire Summit is really all about exploring individual freedom and fulfillment in a safe, sex-positive, inclusive, and diverse environment.
Featured Speakers
To make this journey of self-discovery a bit easier and a lot more fun, we’re bringing together luminaries to give actual tangible insights and takeaways from the fields of sexual health, empowerment, pleasure, intimacy, relationships, dating, polyamory, romance novels, erotica, psychology, and healthy living.
Danielle
Danielle of Openly Committed: Danielle (she/her) is the force behind the online persona @openlycommitted, she's built a community of 140k followers across social media. Danielle's dynamic content transcends boundaries, delving into topics ranging from alternative relationship styles, like ethical non-monogamy, to forging unique, love-filled relationships and creating careers and lives that defy convention. Danielle's message is a resounding call to action, inspiring us all to break free from societal molds and forge paths guided by our true desires, while simultaneously respecting the diverse life choices of others.
Maitland Ward
Southern California-born and bred Maitland Ward has quickly become one of the biggest stars in adult entertainment, after an-already successful career as a model, actress and cosplay personality. After finding fame in the ‘90s on CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful and smash ABC sitcom Boy Meets World, Ward decided to shake things up with racy social and sexy cosplay before making the leap into adult film in 2019.
Ward recently released an eye-popping no-holds-barred memoir about her wild life in the entertainment biz, Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me from Hollywood.
Dirty Lola
Dirty Lola is a sex edutainer, speaker, and self-proclaimed dildo slinger. Known for her live sex ed, Q&A show Sex Ed A Go-Go and as a Sexpert on the Netflix docuseries The Principles of Pleasure, Lola has spent almost a decade working to end the stigma and shame surrounding sex and sexuality.
Having started her journey sharing personal discoveries with polyamory and kink online, Lola now uses her knowledge, warm candor, and public platforms to teach the masses in person and rapt Internet audiences.
Lasara Firefox Allen
Lasara Firefox Allen is a writer, Witch, nonprofit executive director, and coach. Having grown up in the wilds of Mendocino County, Lasara currently resides in Oakland, with/in the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Ohlone people. Lasara is a social work practitioner who practices from an intersectional and anti-oppression-focused feminist framework.
Allison Raskin
Allison Raskin is a New York Times bestselling author and relationship expert, in addition to being an accomplished screenwriter, actor, and director. Allison’s most recent book, Overthinking About You: Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD, And/or Depression was praised by Teen Vogue as "a disarming combination of [Allison’s] personal story and expert advice, all written in a candid, empathetic style.”
Allison is also a trusted mental health advocate thanks to her Emotional Support Lady initiative. Her popular YouTube channel Just Between Us is now a podcast by the same name that was nominated for best overall ensemble for the 2023 iHeartPodcast Awards.
Molly Roden Winter
Molly Roden Winter is the author of the New York Times bestseller, MORE: A Memoir of Open Marriage. Her essays have appeared in Time, The Cut, Romper, and elsewhere. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her husband and two part-time roommates also known as her sons.
Samantha Cole
Samantha Cole is a senior editor for Motherboard, Vice Media's science and technology outlet, where she covers sexuality, online culture, platforms, and the adult industry. She is the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Born on Maryland’s eastern shore, Sam’s decade in journalism spans from hyper-local newspapers to national and international outlets including Popular Science, Fast Company, and Al Jazeera. In 2020, she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for best digital news coverage. In her spare time, Sam can be found biking around Brooklyn, stress-baking, and spelunking into internet subcultures.
Lucy Eden
Lucy Eden is the nom de plume of a romance-obsessed author who writes the kind of romance she loves to read. She’s a sucker for alphas with a soft gooey center, over the top romantic gestures, strong & smart MCs, humor, love at first sight (or pretty damn close), happily ever afters & of course, dirty & steamy love scenes.
When Lucy isn’t writing, she’s busy reading or listening to every book she can get her hands on romance or otherwise. She lives & loves in New York with her husband, two children, a turtle & a Yorkshire Terrier.
Dr. Donna Jennings
Dr. J. Donna Jennings, Ph.D. (she, her) is a retired sex therapist and college human sexuality professor; now an author, editor, and the editor for Rosy. In her 47th year in the sexuality field, she continues her mission to empower others to embrace their sexuality holistically. Her fiction, nonfiction and editing projects embody this belief.
Anne Shade
Anne Shade (Sher/Her) is an incurable romantic with a passion for writing stories about women who love women. Whether its contemporary, erotica, historical, intrigue, or fantasy, Anne’s stories cross many genres with one common factor… BIPOC representation in all her main characters. Anne is the author of six novels: Femme Tales, Masquerade, Love and Lotus Blossoms, Her Heart’s Desire, Securing Ava, and Three Wishes. Anne has also collaborated on two Bold Strokes Books anthologies, In Our Words: Queer Stories from Black, Indigenous and People of Color Writers and My Secret Valentine: Three Romance Novellas. Her other passions include planning dream weddings and making plans for her future bed and breakfast.
Alexis Daria
Alexis Daria (she/her) is the award-winning and international bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola, A Lot Like Adiós, What the Hex, and more. Her books have been featured on several “Best of” lists from outlets like Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Buzzfeed, and Washington Post, and have received starred reviews from trade publications like Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal. A former visual artist, Alexis is a lifelong New Yorker who loves Broadway musicals and pizza. Her latest release, a special edition of her debut novel Take the Lead, is now available in print for the first time.
Kristina Forest
Kristina Forest (she/her) is an author of romance books for young adults. Her novels include I Wanna Be Where You Are, Now That I've Found You, Zyla & Kai and The Neighbor Favor. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, and she can often be found rearranging her bookshelf.
Angela Sharp
Angela Sharp (she /her) is a NYC-based musical comedian, found goofing in clubs, theaters and colleges up and down the coast. Sharp is the founder of Show Us Your Bits Comedy Productions, and the wizardess behind Jersey City’s only Porno Comedy Sextival. Visit theAngelaSharp.com or purchase Angela’s First EP, available here.
J Rose
Jasmine Rosa, or JRose when on stage, is a bewitching cast member of the Poetry Brothel and a revered Poetry Society of New York Program Committee member. JRose is also the winner of various poetry slams including, the 2023 BRIC Brooklyn Grand Slam Finals, Nuyorican Poets Cafe Slam, Rockland Poets Slam, and the Poetic Affair Slam.
Olivia “Troy” Troy
As a BDSM consultant for film, TV, and theater and with two decades of experience practicing BDSM professionally, Olivia Troy, known as Troy (she/her), is on a mission to evolve how we see, think, and talk about kink. Her credits include Showtime’s Billions and season two of Netflix’s Bonding, which she also co-wrote. She is also a certified intimacy coordinator — one of only 40 on SAG-AFTRA’s registry of qualified intimacy coordinators — and the founder of Reps On Set, a consultancy dedicated to building safer creative spaces through intimacy coordination, cultural coordination, and on set mental health support.
Effy Blue
Effy Blue is dedicated to demystifying the world of relationships and tackling difficult questions with creative solutions. I tried the conventional relationship model, but that didn’t work for me. I decided there must be something wrong with me. After swearing off relationships and pouring myself into a successful career in advertising, I cultivated excellent people skills, perseverance, and problem solving. Ten years later, I discovered New York’s sex-positive community. I had found my tribe, as well as the next thing I wanted to pour myself into: relationship design. Effy is co-founder of the Curious Fox Podcast.
About Residence 11
Freedom and fulfillment are the core tenets of Residence 11.
The Residence 11 community discovers stories and insights to navigate healthy, honest, joyful, and fulfilling communication in their relationships.
We also share the best erotica and romance and guide readers on advancements across art, toys, games, technology, and literature, which have the ability to evolve all aspects of pleasure and joy in your life.
A community of over 350+ contributors; a collective reach of over 17 million followers. Our community resides at the intersection of inclusion, diversity, and acceptance with sex positive awareness.
We are sex-positivity optimized 😉
Contributors
Our community is founded on contributions from over 300 subject matter experts across a wide landscape including technology, psychology, pleasure, intimacy coaching, relationships, global activism, LGBTQ+ leadership, erotica, and more.
350+
Contributors
17M
Total Reach
