Putting Penis to Paper: When Sex Writing Goes Terribly Wrong | Broadly

The Review has been holding the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards since 1993. It was created by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and Auberon Waugh, at that time editor of Literary Review, who felt that sex scenes were becoming increasingly gratuitous in literary fiction. "It was almost as if authors were being asked to add sex scenes by their editors because then there'd be a news story saying, 'Have you read so-and-so's new novel? It's got a racy sex scene in it,'" says Brinkley. "They wanted to set up an award where they could make fun of awards and poke fun at that worrying trend in literary fiction."