Program & Schedule

We are very excited to announce our keynote speaker:

TRISTAN TAORMINO
author of the new book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships

Everyone’s Invited to the Pool Party, Or How To Build A Supportive, Inclusive Community
Keynote by Tristan Taormino
What does an inclusive community look like? How do we acknowledge individual experience and identity, support one another, and come together despite our differences? Author, sex educator, and event producer Tristan Taormino will share her experiences of forging space for people of all genders and sexual orientations and what it means to create truly pansexual, trans-positive communities.

TRISTAN TAORMINO is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Wesleyan University in 1993. She is the author of four books: Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (Cleis Press, 2008); True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion (Cleis Press); Down and Dirty Sex Secrets (ReganBooks/HaperCollins); and The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (Cleis Press), winner of a Firecracker Book Award and named Amazon.com's #1 Bestseller in Women's Sex Instruction in 1998. She is series editor of sixteen volumes of the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Best Lesbian Erotica, an annual anthology published by Cleis Press, for which she has collaborated with writers Heather Lewis, Jewelle Gomez, Jenifer Levin, Chrystos, Joan Nestle, Pat Califia, Amber Hollibaugh, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Tea, and Felice Newman. She was a syndicated columnist for The Village Voice for nine years, and writes an advice column for Taboo Magazine. She is the former editor of On Our Backs, the nation's oldest lesbian-produced lesbian sex magazine. Tristan has been featured in over 200 publications including The New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, New York Magazine, Men's Health, and Playboy. She has been named to several media lists, including Out Magazine's 100 Gay Success Stories of the Year and The Advocate's Best and Brightest Gay & Lesbian People Under 30. She has appeared on CNN, HBO's Real Sex, NBC's The Other Half, The Howard Stern Show, Loveline, Ricki Lake, MTV, Oxygen, Fox News, The Discovery Channel, and on over four dozen radio shows. She lectures at top colleges and universities including Yale, Brown, Columbia, Smith, Vassar, and NYU, where she speaks on GLBT issues, sexuality and gender, and feminism. She teaches sex and relationship workshops around the world.