About Tristan

Tristan Taormino^® is an award-winning author, columnist, sex educator, speaker, and feminist pornographer. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her Bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Wesleyan University in 1993.

She is the author of seven books: Secrets of Great G-Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation, The Big Book of Sex Toys, The Anal Sex Position Guide, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion Down and Dirty Sex Secrets, and two editions of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. She is the editor of 23 anthologies including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica and was the founding editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning series Best Lesbian Erotica. Her books have sold over 500,000 copies and been translated into many languages. She’s written for a multitude of publications from Yale Journal of Law and Feminism to Penthouse, and served as editor of the feminist sex magazine On Our Backs. For nine and a half years, she wrote a bi-weekly column in The Village Voice, which was awarded two Sex-Positive Journalism Awards. She has written an advice column for Hustler’s Taboo Magazine since 1999.

She runs her own adult film production company, Smart Ass Productions, and is currently an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment. She has directed and produced 24 adult films, including her multi-award winning debut film based on her book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. Her documentary-style series Chemistry has won several Feminist Porn Awards, and Tristan was the first woman ever to win an AVN Award for Best Gonzo Movie for Chemistry, Volume 1. Her series Rough Sex—which depicts real women’s fantasies of BDSM, dominance/submission, and kink—won the 2011 Feminist Porn Award for Hottest Kink Movie, won two Audience Choice Awards at CineKink Film Festival, was nominated for three AVN Awards, and has been screened at several film festivals. Tristan is creator and executive producer of Vivid-Ed, Vivid’s sex education line. She received the Feminist Porn Trailblazer Award in 2010 for her ten years of work in the industry.

Tristan has taught hundreds of classes (on everything from negotiating relationships to female orgasms) at conferences, community events, and retail stores throughout the world. As a keynote and guest speaker at events, she’s spoken about community building, sexual liberation, and GLBT issues. She has given over 75 lectures and presentations at top colleges and universities all over North America (including Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, University of California-Santa Barbara, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and NYU) on subjects ranging from erotic empowerment to challenging the social construction of monogamy. Tristan’s work, writing and films are routinely used in college courses to explore the complex issues of relationship and sexual diversity, politics and media.

Tristan has been featured in over 200 publications including O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, 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 fifty radio shows.