Úmida
"Wet" - and how an erotic zine came to be
THE BRICKS
Back in my early-twenties, I was at the beach with some friends and my boyfriend at the time. We had a perfect-looking relationship, and love was in the hot air — sex as well. I was young, and my erotic experiences seemed satisfying enough. Still, on that trip, I had the book Dirty Letters to Nora, from James Joyce, as my “beach read” (always a bit too much, I know!). Even until today, I haven’t read any other of his famous books, and I have no idea how I got to choose this one, but what I do remember was what he (my ex) said to me back then: “I know it’s weird, but I’m jealous of you reading this guy. You know I’ll never be able to write things like this to you”. But he was kind to compliment my long romantic emails and birthday cards, when writing was nowhere near my hobbies or how I spent my pleasure leisure time.
Also around that time, I got the book The Obscene Madame D as a gift from a friend. I also had no idea who Hilda Hilst was. It was a moment in my life when receiving erotic literature, craft beers or cute notebooks surprised me — others could see my pleasures more clearly than I could.
In 2019, finally already away from the country and from my biggest fears of being too transgressive, I was walking around Bastille, in Paris, totally enchanted by the possibilities of freedom, when I encountered the exhibition of Toshio Saeki, a famous Japanese illustrator and painter of erotica. I took some pictures, bought a couple zines, discussed in therapy the weirdness of his drawings and why they attracted me, and put one of his postcards on the wall in my apartment in Berlin.
Life went on, I went back to Brazil and during the pandemic I started taking Creative Writing lessons online. They became part of my escape from reality and most of all, my other way of artistic expression. Word by word, I understood that a new world could be created — that depended only on myself. Totally mind-blowing back then, and still is, today.
BUILDING IT
It was June 2025 and I was heartbroken. Once again walking around, away from what I call home (this time in Rome), I entered a cute bookshop looking specifically for erotic literature.
A lot has passed since that remark from my ex-boyfriend, and I took it upon myself to write about desires and the so-called porn. To observe what drives me, pushes me forward — to own my feelings, prohibitions, taboos or interdits (thank you Bataille for this amazing word!) and to turn them to short stories that, surprisingly, can also turn others on is now a big part of my routine.
Since last year, my creative writing group has become focused on this kind of literature (it’s even called “Foreplay” nowadays). Taking Anne Carson, Hilda Hilst and so many other women (and a few men) as inspiration, we meet twice a month to share and comment on each other’s work. But more than that, this safe space has introduced me to incredible human beings that approach sexuality similarly to how I do — and that changes everything.
The lady in the bookshop in Rome told me about Alice Scornajenghi and her erotic zine/magazine Ossi. They didn’t have an edition there, but I got her book Atti Puri, read it in two days and sent the idea of making our own zine to our WhatsApp group.1
My experience with publishing design was just with “the Bibles” (hah!) I had done for my previous short movies, so I knew how to use Indesign and took the role to do it for our project. In the group, two of the writers are also illustrators and they filled up the pages with erotic drawings.
A few meetings, a Google Drive folder, some discussions about the name and what we really wanted with it was all it took (with a lot of will and desire, of course!)
ON THE WALL
The zine format is vertical and small (9,5x19 cm), allowing the reader to keep it in a pocket and take it anywhere. And I couldn’t run away from pink, bordeaux and red for the colors. I’ve also created stains and quotation marks as blots printed in the paper, to get the pages to look dirty and wet, like we proudly are.
In that sense, I think it’s better to share our Manifesto and some of its pages.
Úmida might be just the beginning. Like that first time something happened between your legs. The shock, the body’s reactions, fluids, wetness... arousal, desire, pleasure? But we got used to hiding it. Thinking it’s a great advantage not to expose it to the world when something moves us. Closing our legs, our mouths, keeping it in.
Dirty, too wet, mutating and malleable. Capable of deformations and transformations of matter. Forever punished and demonized, out of fear of having to swallow what was always theirs alone – our freedom. We have what all heat and dryness desires. To transgress, even if through words. To not accept the limits of stone, to seek the beyond, the holes of fantasy, the cracks in reality. Leaking.
Together we choose to pour ourselves out, to let flow what’s inside. Those who aren’t scared can listen and look. Pleasure inscribes itself on paper, leaves traces on the page of what was once unspeakable. From the woven text we emerge with force: as women.
Úmida comes as a call to latent desire. A warning, a provocation, and an invitation. That the erotic can always be lurking. May it be, yes, insatiable, free and wild. And may it flow between bodies, between who writes, who illustrates, and who reads.
We launched it to the world two weeks ago, at an independent publication fair in São Paulo. For us, it’s already a success. Besides being out there, it brought seven amazing women together.
I can’t describe how important it has been to share with them not only my writing, but also my struggles about sex, love and how hard it is to face it in a world where this subject is still such a taboo. And how those women who try to own it are still seen as outsiders (or too much).
The idea is to bring even more women to the group. Hoping to find more writers and illustrators, we also created an Instagram account and we are calling more people to send us their stories and their art.
We even called this edition #01, just so we keep motivated to keep it happening, spreading the power of unhiding our desires and taking up space in the world of erotic art.
Who would have thought I needed to go so far to find my group so close to where I run away from?
Please follow us at @umida_zine.
And if you want to read some of my short stories (in Portuguese), subscribe at Vaipraonde.
Thanks again for reading!
Oioioioi! Or better yet, ciaooo :) Sorry for disappearing, but my time abroad has been a bit chaotic..
But I’m popping up to throw out an idea I saw here (I’m in Rome). It’s an erotic fanzine. Super independent publication, but it seems to be a huge hit.
Who knows, maybe we can try to find a way to make our own??