Perhaps you’ve enjoyed the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Awards in the past. This year, Salon inaugurated its first annual Good Sex Award, intended to “reward the best-written, most interesting and most convincing piece of sex writing published in a novel in 2010.” The winner, announced today, is James Hynes’s Next. Here’s an [...]

It’s the end of fall, and you know what that means. Okay, yes, NaNoWriMo is over–but I’m talking about the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. It’s a shame the Literary Review doesn’t select runners-up, as each of their selections was capital-B Bad in its own special way. So here [...]

With her personal take on the best of sex writing from 2009 (or, rather, 2008; the title is a bit of a misnomer), Rachel Kramer Bussel notes that “You don’t have to look far to find sex, but you do have to get a bit bolder when looking for writing and thinking about sex that doesn’t play to the lowest common denominator.” Some of the best selections from this year’s anthology include “The Immaculate Orgasm: Who Needs Genitals?” by Mary Roach, “Sex Offenders!!” by Kelly Davis, “Is Cybersex Cheating?” by Violet Blue, and the short but sweet “Silver-Balling” by Stacey D’Erasmo, where even the most profligate lovers are confounded by the name of an unfamiliar sexual act.