Presenter Bios

Amazon Syren – Ottawa, ON

Cultivating Entitlement: Receiving Service with Grace and Confidence

Amazon is a queer femme sadist who has spent the last year and a half engaged in a D/s dynamic, grappling with questions of entitlement and dominance all the while, both privately and publically as co-facilitator for a discussion on Holding Power (HOWL, March 2011). She is a planning committee member for Hull Ottawa Women of Leather (HOWL) and a co-organizer for Spring Fling 2011.

Anna Harris – Toronto, ON

The Personal, the Political and the Professional: Sex Workers Speak AND Submission Grappling

Anna Harris is a Toronto-based sex professional. Through touch, as well as a strap-on from time to time, she asks her clients to surrender to her and focus fully and deeply on their own feelings and sensations. For her part, she primarily devotes her attention to their pleasure so they can deepen their experience of embodiment and broaden out their erotic capacity. Also, ever since she was a wee thing, Anna Harris has loved to wrestle. She is looking forward to sharing with you what she has picked up over the years.

Charlie – Montreal, QC

Power in Balance

Charlie is a longstanding active member of the kinky-poly-queer community in Montreal, and recently in Ottawa. She is a switch, but mostly identifies, and has extensive experience, as a dominant and as a sadist. Professionally, she is often involved with facilitating discussions and training adults.

Dana Shaw (aka Black Orchid) – Toronto, ON

Female Genitorture

Dana (aka Black Orchid) is a bi-dyke poly switchy sick fuck from Toronto, with 25+ years of scene experience. She's a demanding, evil top and a sweet, sexy submissive and bottom. Dana continues to run BENT, as she has since 2004. BENT was the first south-western Ontario play party to permit sex to mix with play following the Supreme Court decision regarding sex parties (R v. Labaye, 2005). She has organized numerous play parties and taught countless workshops in and around Toronto and the north-eastern United States.

Dexter – Toronto area, ON

Kinky ASL (Back and Kinkier that Ever!)

Dexter is a queer dyke who has been active in the kinky community for almost 10 years and is a member of International Deaf Leather. She is Deaf and has experience teaching other people American Sign Language. In addition, Dexter has years of experience presenting all types of workshops non-kink and kinky in different settings. She is a sadist dominant who enjoys discussions about power exchange. Outside of the kink, she is active in the Deaf queer community to promote communication between Deaf and hearing people.

Frenchie – Montreal, QC

Fat Is Not a Four-Letter Word: Kink and Accessibility for Chubby, Fat, Plump or Otherwise Rotund Folks

Frenchie has been a fat activist, kinkster and storyteller all of her adult life. She performs guerrilla fat activism such as shocking people by wearing a tiny bikini on the beach and/or eating a cupcake while doing it. In the past decade, she has offered workshops on this topic both in formal trainings and in activist settings. She has had the pleasure of developing two performance pieces for the Femme Show www.femmeshow.org on fat sexuality. A sexologist by trade, a sex enthusiast always, she enjoys discussing, dissecting and shifting people’s conception of healthy positive sexuality. Previously, Frenchie presented a workshop on anal fisting at Harvest.

Hockney – Manchester, UK

A Pinch and a Punch: Giving Pain with Your Hands and Feet

Hockney is a sadistic high femme with fetishes for rubber, corsets and shoes. She loves pain play, especially rough body play, and is never happier than when she has a bottom rolling around at her feet, preferably in chains. She’s also often found with a knife in her hand and a smile on her face. Very occasionally you’ll see her on the receiving end of pain, still with a smile on her face! Hockney has been active in the public BDSM scene for several years now and is a committee member of SM Dykes Manchester. Over the years she has given workshops on a variety of kinky topics in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

Ingrid – Vancouver, BC

Sanguine: Needles, Flesh and Blood

Ingrid identifies as a butch, trans (M2F), leatherdyke Daddy, flags hunter green on the left, and is easily distracted by femme dykes. She describes herself as a “hands-on” Top who enjoys spanking, slapping, punching, choking, needles, knives, and fire. Ingrid has been publicly involved in S/m since 1999, and has previously served as an Officer for The Exiles in San Francisco, as a co-director of By Invitation Only (BIO) in Vancouver, and is a member of Mama’s Family. Ingrid has presented various S/m workshops, including needle play, in Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto, Ottawa and Berlin.

Jacky – Montreal, QC

Humiliation and Degradation Play

Jacky was once a good little Catholic girl who fantasized about humiliation—hers and others’—while attending mass. As a grown-up queer, genderfluid transguy, he has refined his penchant for humiliation and degradation by engaging in discussions online with other pervs, reading and writing twisted stories and doing a lot of soul-searching (before, during and after play!) to figure out what exactly is humiliating and degrading to him and why he gets off on it. His other activities include mothering a son, organizing drag shows and other events, teaching and working on his PhD.

Jenn Jenkins – Fredericton, NB

The Power of Anticipation

Jenn was born and raised in New Brunswick, Canada. Like many in the scene, she identified as a bottom-type even before understanding what that meant and found it difficult to first brave the real life realm of an alternate lifestyle. For the past ten years, she has been involved in various levels of BDSM and her passion for service went mostly untapped for a long time. In 2009, she met Kim Attica, who excited Jenn about the possibilities of really being in service. Not too long after, Kim agreed to mentor Jenn formally with the emphasis being heavily on leather history and foundations. Currently, Jenn is interested in Leather History, Power Exchange, and Service, as well as teaching and mentoring other people who are new to BDSM. She identifies herself as queer and is a strong believer in poly relationships. Previous presenting experience includes a presentation on the history of corsets and corsetry at the Society of Bastet in Halifax, NS; participation in History/Herstory during Fredericton Pride 2010; and Service, Protocol and Formalities within BDSM Relationships at Power Exchange Rhode Island (PERI).

Kay Dundas – Ottawa, ON

The Personal, the Political and the Professional: Sex Workers Speak

Kay is a transwoman and a part-time sex worker. The bulk of her work consists of GFE or “girlfriend experience”-type encounters. She has recently taken a break from sex work to concentrate on a new and growing power exchange dynamic.

Leslie Robertson – Ottawa, ON

The Personal, the Political and the Professional: Sex Workers Speak

Leslie Robertson is a sex worker ally. As a feminist lawyer with Galldin Law in Ottawa, Leslie is working with POWER (Prostitutes of Ottawa Work, Educate and Resist) in requesting that the Ontario Human Rights Commission investigate the violence and discrimination committed by the Ottawa Police against sex workers. This past year Galldin Law and Sach Goldblatt Mitchell, LLP acted as co-counsel for POWER and Maggie’s: the Toronto Sex Workers Action Project as interveners at the Ontario Court of Appeal in the constitutional challenge of the prostitution laws. In her practice Leslie works with women on a variety of human rights and labour issues, and is interested in non-traditional family law situations and in the interplay between the law, sexuality and queer relationships.

Linda aka Mind Mistress – Montreal, QC

Supercharge Your Role-Play!

Linda (Mind Mistress) likes to turn boys into girls by hypnosis, working as a pro hypno-domme, hypnotherapist and Master NLP Practitioner. For 15 years, she’s been helping people work out queer and gender issues, as well as giving them fun hallucinated adventures in trance. She’s a geek, Pagan and roller derby girl who also likes giving people a trigger word to orgasm on command… consensually, of course.

Linz – Ottawa, ON

Bondage for Bottoms

Linz has been actively kinky for over 15 years and physical and emotional movement restriction is where it began. She has the emotional make-up of a 24/7 boi with a physical attraction to topping and training. This has led her to develop an interesting understanding of both the physical and emotional aspects of restrictions. She has been involved in D/s relationships since she was 16 and has had the opportunity to experience these relationships as a dominant, a boi and a switch. She has a deep respect for her leather community and works to reflect that in everything she does.

Liz Wilson – Toronto, ON

High Tea and Low Morals: The Whats, Whys and Hows of English Tea Service

Liz Wilson has been coming to Harvest since the very first one, back in 2007. She’s taking the Tea Sommelier course at George Brown college, but is really just a tea aficionado who loves talking about, making, and serving (and, of course, drinking!) tea.

Luna Allison – Ottawa, ON

Energetic Signals and Non-Verbal Communication in Kink

Luna has been a facilitator, performer, poly kinkster, pagan and yogi for the last 10 years. She’s a yoga teacher, has her first level in Reiki healing and has experience with group consensus and mediation. What this comes down to is that she spends a lot of time reading people’s energies and non-verbal communication. How we send and receive cues is a long-time fascination of hers—she’s looked to interrogation textbooks, Patanjali’s yoga sutras, movement classes, the chakra system, and various rituals, courses and workshops to deepen her understanding of how energetic communication works.

Mackenzie – Toronto, ON

Kinky Type Indicator

Mackenzie has facilitated a large variety of personality type workshops for over 10 years in her work as a vocational counsellor. She is excited to have the opportunity to integrate type theory concepts into the activities engaged in by the leather community.

Stella – Toronto, ON

Tattooed Ladies, Fat Ladies and Cooch Dancers: The Women of the Sideshow

Having always wanted to run away and join the circus, Stella now makes this dream come true by devoting her graduate studies to the topic. Drawing on queer theory, critical disability theory, and cultural studies, she thinks critically about historical freak shows, and how they continue to be culturally significant today. Proliferation of language makes her especially hot and bothered and she is continuously fascinated by the circumstances in which the term “freak” get embraced, and when it gets rejected, particularly in relation to queer and kinky communities.

T’Hayla Ferguson – Toronto, ON

Control

T’Hayla Ferguson has presented nationally and internationally on a variety of BDSM and kink topics, including but not limited to: fisting, needle play, cutting, M/s relationships and M/s spirituality. As a return presenter T’Hayla is thrilled to participate in Unholy Harvest 2011. Harvest remains one of the best women’s BDSM conferences in the world. Thank you to those that make this possible.

Victoria Windsor – Toronto, ON

Advanced Flogging Techniques AND The Personal, the Political and the Professional: Sex Workers Speak

Victoria Windsor has been part of the leather community nearly 20 years and doesn't regret much of it... She is honoured to have been a titleholder, an award recipient, a presenter, a mentor, and now an Executive Producer (Toronto Leather Pride). She was taught to use floggers by her first official Sir (eons ago) and was taught how to use a single-tail by a Hollywood expert who trained Catwoman and Indiana Jones. Whips are the ultimate in danger and sexiness. After years of practice she is happy to teach anyone who wants to learn.

Ms. Virilia Crush – Toronto, ON

Microbranding Through Cell Popping

Ms. Virilia Crush has been a professional dominant for seven years, and has been volunteering within the BDSM community for over 12. She has been engaged in branding for about four years, and specifically micro-branding for about two years, learning from Special Tom (OH, USA).

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