One Bad Sex Award-winner's view on the 'bullying, prudery and ignorance' that tries to shut down literature's erotic side
With this year's shortlist for the Bad Sex Awards announced last month, former winner Rowan Somerville challenges the purpose and legitimacy of the accolade
When I realised that sex was going to be the central part of my novel The Shape of Her, I was a little worried. I sensed that to examine this subject with any authenticity required a suspension of defences, and that to do so in this country is to ask for a kicking.When the book had been written and published, and I was told by an editor of the Literary Review, the magazine which runs the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, that I had won their annual prize, it felt like the closing of a circle.
Full article at The IndependentAnd elsewhere in The Independent - EL James author finds Fifty Shades publicity ‘too exposing’