The Auckland Writers Festival kicks off next week with a wide variety of authors on the bill, and subjects to be discussed. For adults only, Let’s Get Physical: The Importance of
Horny Stories will see Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted writer Pip Adam in conversation with three storytellers to discuss ‘the empowering nature of writing sex and why we should all be reading more smut’.

“People are hungry for these conversations,” says panellist Elina Ashembayeva, co-founder of story-telling website Storyo.

“There is so much we don’t talk about. Even in the most progressive friend groups, we keep things to ourselves or don’t reflect fully, because well, that’s still the norm.”

Founded in 2019, Storyo showcases interviews with, and stories from, a diverse range of New Zealanders – from migrants to drag queens, athletes to poets – people she believes are under-represented in the media.

“If it’s a migrant, a gender-diverse person or a person with disabilities, we either see their stories when they achieve some level of what society deems successful or because we want to highlight their struggles,” Ashembayeva says. “What about all the things in between? Their dating life, their relationship with families, their dreams, struggles with mental health.”

For Let’s Get Physical, she says she’s most looking forward to discussing “how to make horny storytelling more than just a fringe creative community pursuit because whether people want it or not, these topics are present for everyone, so let’s get them out of the shadows.”

“I want to talk about how pleasure and sex are ever-present in our lives,” she says, “even when we don’t know it, based on the experiences we’ve had as children or how our parents talked (or did not talk) about it. We all want a more nuanced, reflective conversation.”

In this edited Q&A, she explains more about the upcoming event and why Kiwis need to be more sex-positive.

Why do we need more conversations and sex-positive stories around pleasure?

Everything in our lives affects and is affected by these topics. Pleasure (or absence of it) is one of the central pillars of our lives. Pleasure doesn’t just mean sex. Pleasure is the presence of eroticism in our lives and we are so damn disconnected from it. Constant pressures of hard working, burnout culture, consumerism is separating us more and more from being connected to ourselves in ways that bring us pleasure. Through touch, through breath, through movement, through all the senses. Imagine if everyone had an opportunity to experience more pleasure in their lives – what kind of society we would be and what kind of decisions we would make. It would be a happier, more just world (or I choose to believe it would).

Why should we “all be reading more smut” (as it says in the bio for the event)?

Again, we need more pleasure and playfulness in our lives. Those things ultimately connect us to our humanity, to ourselves. I don’t know about others but I really want to see more people who are more playful and connected. Being in pleasure is vulnerable. I so wish people had more access to pleasure through horny stories, smut, and exposure to horny art. We need to fund it more, normalise it more, and reflect on it more. (As one of the ultimate outcomes, I hope that people would inflict less violence on each other and exercise less control over each other, that way).

What’s your advice for people on how to be more sex-positive in their own lives?

Find people like sex and relationships therapist Michelle Kasey, who makes wonderful content and free workshops in person and online. Follow them, read and reflect, and take time for yourself and your body. Light a candle, put on your favourite tune, sit on a comfy cushion, read some sexy stories or poetry, look at yourself in the mirror, journal about your relationship to your body/sex/fantasies, try moving your body the way it might feel nice – any combination of those things. Just take time for your body and consume wholesome sex-positive content that doesn’t make you feel s*** about your delicious belly rolls, small number of sex partners or your bodily hair.

Storyo’s Sex and Health series featured 25 people talking about everything from sex and pleasure, to STIs and mental health. What were some of the most interesting things you learned?

When recruiting for the series, I selected a very diverse group of people but I think even I didn’t realise how common some of the experiences would be among the interviewees: myths that exist and still hold their power over us around sex, common experiences of unwanted encounters and sexual health violence among women and non-binary folks, how common some of the reproductive health conditions were. I didn’t select people based on some of these things and yet it showed what a deep impact those topics have on our lives. We are walking around thinking that we might be the only ones experiencing things, and heck, it’s most of us in reality.

A recent Herald story said porn use is on the rise with middle age women – what did your interviewees have to say about porn and their relationship to it?

I think our interviewees reflected how porn is probably viewed in the society – this weird love-hate-addiction relationship to it. Most people said that they’ve acquired most of their insecurities through porn – the way sex should be had, the way your body is meant to look, how long you can last for, how many partners you should have, how you should sound, what you even define as sex (spoiler alert – it doesn’t just mean penetration). It’s a bottomless pit of unhelpful narratives. However, I want to add that there is more and more ethically produced porn and porn made from a queer/femme perspective that is so freeing for people to see.

Elina Ashimbayeva will appear on the Let’s Get Physical: The Importance of Horny Stories panel at the Auckland Writers Festival May 14-19 May, along with Pip Adam, Nathan Joe and K Patrick. For more information and tickets visit writersfestival.co.nz