Hard as rock: UNC student aims to publish advice book

A recent UNC graduate is encouraging sex positivity, inclusivity and female perspectives in the rock climbing community in an unexpected way.

Ellen Currin, who graduated in 2015, is writing the “Climb-a-Sutra,” a book of sex positions inspired by rock climbing.

Currin said the idea for the book had been in the back of her mind since she started rock climbing in college.

“I started climbing when I was at UNC, and I have a lot of friends who are also climbers, and it’s hard not to joke around about all of the dirty puns that you can create with a lot of climbing terms,” Currin said.

Currin said she was fortunate to have a lot of sex-positive friends who encouraged her work.

“To be honest, I was shocked when I found out there was not already a book of climbing-inspired sex positions,” Currin said. “Because it seems like such an obvious thing to do.”

Currin said a huge reason she wanted to write the book was to add female perspective to the male-dominated worlds of rock climbing and erotic literature.

“If you look at books about rock climbing as well as books about sex or anything related to sex, a lot of them are written by men,” Currin said. “And even the ones that aren’t written by men a lot of times sort of have men as their target audience.”

While Currin said she wants the book to be fun for the most part, she also wants to show women can be powerful individuals.

“I also really do want it to be something that showed that both in climbing and in sex, women are a lot more than just accessories,” Currin said.

UNC climbing team coach Kerry Scott said Currin is a friend of hers, and they were involved in climbing together at UNC.

Scott said the bottom of the each page of the book includes Currin’s perspective on feminism and sex positivity and that’s the most important part.

Abigail Cooksey, a UNC climbing teammate of Currin’s, said the jokes in Currin’s book are reminiscent of jokes they shared in their college days. She said she’s happy the book brings a female perspective to climbing.

“There’s not a huge female representation in climbing and anytime you can talk about women’s issues in any way, shape or form in the context of climbing is important,” Cooksey said.

While the book aims to educate and provide a voice for women, Currin said she really hopes it’s something people have fun reading.

“I hope it’s something fun people can enjoy while... also being inclusive to all genders and all sexual orientations and all interest both in rock climbing and in sex,” she said.

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