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
October 7 & 8
Jersey City • Sip Studios
140 Sip Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Buy ticketsDesire Summit Sizzle Reel
Los Angeles 2023
Sponsors & Partners
Workshops and Topics for Desire East 2023
Saturday
Morning Session
Experimenting & Intimacy with Zoe Kors
Keeping It Hot with Ashleigh Renard
Lingerie Fashion Show
Social Lunch
Afternoon Session
Erotica Romance Panel - Led by Rachel Kramer Bussel with Lucy Eden, Dr. J, Kristina Forest
Musical Comedy Act with Angela Sharp
Sex, Tech & AI with Samantha Cole
Slam Poetry Collaboration
Sex Toys Diry Lola
Evening
Cocktail Hour & Live Music
Raffle Basket Giveaways
Sunday
Morning Session
Queer Futurism & Witchcraft with Lasara Firefox Allen
Overthinking Sex with Allison Raskin
Adult Sex Ed Comedy with Dani Leonard
Social Lunch
Afternoon Session
Open Relationships with Danielle of Openly Committed
Live Music with Lily Desmond
Destigmatizing The Sex Industry with Maitland Ward
Burlesque Show
Real Talk - Trying BDSM
Evening
Closing Reception & Live Music
Raffle Basket Giveaways
Last Event's Swag Bag
Desire East 2023:
Experimentation
The focus of October's east coast event will be Experimentation.
This October, 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 Brooklyn's 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 October 2023 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.
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.
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.
Rachel Kramer Bussel
Rachel Kramer Bussel is the Editor-in-Chief of Residence 11. Rachel is the author of the nonfiction guide How to Write Erotica and editor of over 70 anthologies, including the Best Women's Erotica of the Year series. Her books have won multiple IPPY Awards, the Samois Anthology Award, and she has won the John Preston Short Fiction Award. Rachel edits personal essay publication Open Secrets and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, Glamour, Salon, Slate, The Village Voice, and numerous other publications.
She Tweets @raquelita and teaches essay writing and erotica classes online and consults via EroticaWriting101.com.
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.
Zoë Kors
Zoë Kors is a sought-after thought leader of intimacy and sexuality. Her book, Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve (Hachette, 2022) is available wherever you buy books. She is the resident sex and intimacy coach and contributor at sexual wellness app Coral. Zoë is the former Senior Editor and Creative Director of LA Yoga Magazine and is a contributor to Elephant Journal, MindBodyGreen, Avocado Green Mattress and Fabletics blogs. Zoë’s article, 6 Ways to Have Radically Intimate Sex, quickly went viral and is currently at over two million views and over 250K Facebook shares.
In addition to a thriving private practice, Zoë offers her services through Center for Relational Healing, which specializes in the treatment of sex addiction and betrayal trauma. As a member of the CRH team, Zoë works with clients to reintroduce healthy sexuality and intimacy after the trauma of betrayal.
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.
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.
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.
Ashleigh Renard
A former figure skating coach and choreographer, Ashleigh took the quest for perfection into marriage and motherhood, with some disastrous and hilarious results. Through her books Swing and Keeping it Hot: The Workbook and the success of the viral Keeping it Hot video series she's built a committed mass-following who tune in daily for her fresh, no-fuss advice on everything from keeping monogamy hot, to renegotiating a marriage, to getting kids to clean the house (because nothing makes her prouder than child labor).
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.
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.
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
