David Guterson Bad Sex Award Winner 2011
David Guterson has been awarded the 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction award on Tuesday.
Guterson accepted the backhanded award for a love scene in his latest work Ed King, a 20th century take on the myth of Oedipus.
The decision to award this year’s Bad Sex “honor” to Guterson, an American author, was announced at a gala event in London.
"Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I'm not in the least bit surprised," Guterson said in a statement responding to his win.
The Literary Review has given the Bad Sex award to an unsuspecting author every year since 1993. British author and journalist Auberon Waugh established the award to discourage tasteless graphic sex scenes in novels.
In a statement on Guterson’s win, Johnathan Beckman, an assistant editor for the Literary Review, said Guterson was the "clear winner” after judges reviewed a passage in Ed King where the protagonist has relations with his mother in the shower.
Some past recipients of the “Bad Sex” award include authors Stephen King, John Updike and Norman Mailer.