Allie Rowbottom's Porn Informed Guide to Going from Literary Starlet to Star

Words: Allie Rowbottom

porn has taught her about writing.

Lovers XXX, forthcoming from Virago in June 2026. Cover Design by Sophie Ellis) it stand out

The author of Aesthetica reveals the cover of her new novel, LOVERS XXX, and talks literature, literary it-girls and what vintage porn has taught her about writing.

Lovers XXX, forthcoming from Virago in June 2026. Cover Design by Sophie Ellis.

Lovers XXX tells the story of Winnie and Jude, best friends embarking on careers as adult film stars in the early 1980s. The novel is the product of my lifelong obsession with how women survive (and sometimes thrive) within systems created to oppress us. Perhaps also my lifelong propensity for provocation, which in my adulthood has manifested as a compulsion to apply a literary lens to subjects that seem, on their face, un-literary, for little reason other than they concern women pursuing occupations or taking stances that some might think lowbrow.

Photography: Christina Bryson

When I wrote my debut Aesthetica, I wanted to explore plastic surgery and the culture of self-objectification on image-based social platforms. I had never read a literary novel wherein the main character underwent a breast augmentation, though hundreds of thousands of women do so each year. Characters with cosmetic work were punchlines or metaphors or objects of desire, not round and complicated, and certainly not protagonists. Similarly, I wrote Lovers XXX because I’d never read a literary novel about porn, which I see as a major—yet secret—engine of culture.

Before we get started a brief coda: I’m a novelist, not a porn star. Lovers XXX isn’t the product of avid pornography consumption – quite the opposite. I grew up in rural New Hampshire with 1990s-era dial up internet. Even if I’d thought to look for porn, it would have taken me hours to download a single image. But, like the character of Jude in Lovers XXX, the first time I saw an adult film, in my early twenties, it felt familiar, as if I had absorbed the aesthetics by osmosis, simply by existing as a woman.

Since then, I’ve made up for lost time by consuming epic quantities of “vintage” (shot before 1993) pornography as research for Lovers XXX (and for pleasure), and have gleaned from the experience certain lessons I’ve extrapolated to my writing practice and career.   

Starlet V. Star

The porn starlet , I would argue, is an archetype  akin to the literary it-girl: an up and comer, a hustler, an artist with a knack, either learned or innate, for selling herself and her work in any way she can and throwing a big party in the process. (I’m writing this as someone who has been called, in recent years, a literary it-girl, in manners both laudatory and derogatory. Personally, I’ve never disliked the label, though I have felt compelled to complicate it.) In porn, a penchant for self-promotion might make the starlet a favorite among industry suits. In literature, it probably won’t. At least not in her lifetime. Exhibit A: Eve Babitz.

The star, by contrast, has been around the block. This isn’t her first porn, it’s her fifty-first. This isn’t her first novel, it’s her third, fifth, eleventh. She knows what it’s like to publish, knows the arbitrary nature of most markets and the indignities of Goodreads and X, knows the sting of rejection, the thrill of recognition, and has learned from each that what matters most is this question: Did I execute my vision? 

Shoot With a Script

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We should tell ourselves stories in order to fuck, but contemporary pornography, (like most contemporary literature, sadly), often does a piss poor job at crafting complex narratives. Both in literature and in porn, what takes the place of nuance and connectivity is simple shock value, and the most common, commonly normalized, sensationalized, and eroticized story of all: violence against women, rendered with the blunt skill of Colleen Hoover and Joe Francis.

Don’t resort to lazy narratives, not in your creative work and not in the work you do to promote it. Yes, shock value gets clicks, extreme standpoints of any kind get subscriptions, eyeballs, whatever. But nuance enables fantasy and invites people to think for themselves, which, one hopes, will ultimately change a few lives. 

Don’t Get Shot Out

A common phenomenon among porn starlets: getting caught up in the momentum of their main character moment, mistaking popularity for bedrock, and saying yes to every opportunity out of pressure, or desperation to maintain relevancy, or any reason, really, other than interest, desire, or extremely large sums of money. Doing too much too quickly and making oneself too available is a one-way ticket to overfamiliarity. Don’t do anal or gangbangs at the jump (unless you really want to), and don’t do that reading in the far hinterlands of Brooklyn either (unless you really want to). 

90% Hole, 10% Soul

There’s a moment in any great pornographic film, starring any great actor, where the veil of make-believe drops, if only for an instant, and viewers get a hit of real emotion, real enjoyment, the real person behind the performance. This moment is electric, infectious, mysterious. Blink and you miss it. But once you see it, you’ll never stop looking for it. The ability to harness this moment, and use it, is what separates the starlets from the stars.

When it comes to the craft of writing, I endeavor to invert this formula; my books are 90% soul, 10% hole. But when it comes to promoting and publicizing my work and, quite frankly, selling anything, I take my pointers from porn stars of yore. 

You might notice that 90% of this guide is facetious. But ten percent is a personal peek into my practice and what drives it: obsession, humor, provocation and an abiding interest in women’s relationships. I care deeply about what I make, so I think carefully about how to get it into the hands of as many readers as possible. I never imagined I’d compare my books to pornography but here we are: like the best, rarest porn, I hope Lovers XXX engenders fantasy, emotional release and freedom of thought. If it does, I’ll know I executed my vision.