And the Winner for Bad Sex is...

"David Guterson has won the 19th annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for Ed King (Bloomsbury). The prize was presented to a representative of his publishers by Barbara Windsor, star of the Carry On films and Eastenders.

Alexander Waugh and Barbara Windsor (© Alan Davidson/The Picture Library Ltd)

David Guterson lives in America and was unable to accept the prize in person. 'Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I'm not in the least bit surprised,' he said in response to his fifth novel winning the award. His bestselling debut, Snow Falling on Cedars, won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.


Ed King is a re-imagining of the Oedipus myth in the second half of the twentieth century. The winning scene is introduced in the book as 'the part where a mother has sex with her son'. The judges were swayed by the following paragraphs:

These sorts of gyrations and five-sense choreographies, with variations on Ed's main themes, played out episodically between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., when Diane said, "Let's shower."

In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap. After a while he shut his eyes, and Diane, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels, the other vigorous with the soap-and-warm-water treatment. It didn't take long for the beautiful and perfect Ed King to ejaculate for the fifth time in twelve hours, while looking like Roman public-bath statuary. Then they rinsed, dried, dressed, and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.

Guterson narrowly edged out strong competition from Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 ('A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought'), Chris Adrian's The Great Night (featuring an 'impossibly stiff, impossibly eloquent cock' that 'poked her now from the front and now from the back and now from the side'), and Lee Child's The Affair ('Then it was time. We started tenderly. Long and slow, long and slow. Deep and easy. She flushed and gasped. So did I. Long and slow').


The shortlist also included:

• On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry
• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
• Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas
• 11.22.63 by Stephen King
• The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel
• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
• Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
• Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

Last year the prize was won by Rowan Somerville for The Shape of Her published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson..."


The Original article may be found below


http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex2011.php

13 Reasons to Come to the EWW Holiday Party!

Happy Thursday! In honor of today, I figured I would do a list of 13 reasons why you should come to the third annual EWW Holiday Party. It's a not-to-be-missed event, sure to finish off the year in style!

1. It's the Third Annual Evanston Writers Workshop Holiday Party! You've seen the rest, now come to the best! We are the one and only, doing battle for writers since 2007!

2. You can party with all your writer friends, who don't look at you funny when you want to discuss past participles in public.

3. It's a Murder Mystery! You've heard about them, and now you get to come to one! Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and follow those clues!

4. Debbie and I will cry if you don't come.

5. No, really. :)

6. You'll be able to have an old war story about the party when it's all said and done!

7. You get to find out what's in the goody bags!

8. We'll have some really good food for everyone!

9. We'll even do an awards ceremony for all EWW folks who come. Come find out what award YOU will be given! (Best Punster, Best Mustache, Best Puzzler...)

10. For all you NaNoWriters out there, come and de-stress after the full month of writing your a** off!

11. Generate fodder for your next superstar story. Even better if you write creative non-fiction - after all, truth is stranger than fiction!

12. You can say, "I was there!"

13. And the best reason of all for coming to the holiday party? TO HAVE A GREAT TIME, EWW-STYLE!!!

Register today!

Dispatches From the Field: "Overwhelmed"

In the second in our series of "Dispatches From the Field," Michael Horvich discusses his reactions to the conference.

If you missed our conference, be sure to put next year's on your calendar: Saturday and Sunday, 06/04-05/2011.

The Evanston Writers Workshop (EWW) Conference took place in Winnetka, Illinois on May 15 and 16, 2010. The conference was a first for me, a wonderful experience and I learned a lot about the writing profession. However, my mantra became “DO NOT BECOME OVERWHELMED,” although I did a little. Having learned so many new things about the “business” of writing made becoming a published writer seem further away than it ever had been. But I repeated my mantra over and over and listed: I am further along than ever, learning more is good, making connections with like minded people helps, you love writing and that’s what counts, etc.

Spring Fling 2010

Chicago North-RWA chapter conference is pleased to announce:

Spring Fling 2010

Dates: April 23-24, 2010
Location: Hyatt, Deerfield, IL
Headliners and Keynote speakers: Cherry Adair and Julia Quinn

We hope that you'll join us for the conference featuring workshops led by our headliners, Julia Quinn and Cherry Adair as well as authors Jenna Petersen, Elizabeth Hoyt, Jade Lee, Courtney Milan, and Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and many others.
Pitch appointments will be available with guest Editors: Amanda Bergeron (Avon), Lindsey Faber (Samhain) and Kat O'Shea (Leap Books & The Wild Rose Press) or Agents: Diana Fox, Laurie McLean, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe, and Paige Wheeler.
Please check our website regularly for updated information:

http://www.chicagospringfling.com/

Hope to see you there!

** Permission to forward granted and encouraged! **