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Kittens Rejoice as Ed Luce’s Wuvable Oaf Wins 2017 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Graphic Novel

ed luce's wuvable oaf cover

Monday was the 29th Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrates LGBT+ voices and helps us curate our reading list from LGBT horror to memoir, mystery, and poetry. The full list of winners is here, but we’re always particularly excited about the LGBT Graphic Novel category.

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Last year, the winner was E.K. Weaver’s The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal. This year, it was Ed Luce’s Wuvable Oaf: Blood and Metal. Cathy Camper writes in her review:

Wuvable Oaf is the tale of a big, hairy, gay ex-wrestler’s search for love in San Francisco. Oaf, formerly known as the wrestler Goteblüd, is a gentle giant, a kitten lover who makes toys stuffed with his abundant body hair for an adopted boy, and who harbors a passion for The Smiths.”

With a beginning in 2007 as floppy comics, Luce’s rich story eventually became a bound graphic novel that Camper writes “have also found a diverse readership that includes rock ‘n’ roll dudes, women and kitty lovers.” If that sounds like something you’d go for, you can grab a copy here.

Other titles nominated in the category include Eric Liberge and Arnaud Delalande’s The Case of Alan Turing: The Extraordinary and Tragic Story of the Legendary Codebreaker and Active Voice The Comic Collection: The Real Life Adventures Of An Asian-American, Lesbian, Feminist, Activist And Her Friends Written by P. Kristen Enos with Heidi Ho; illustrated by Derek Chua, Leesamarie Croal, Casandra Grullon, Beth Varni, and Dan Parent. I’m definitely curious about Active Voice because, well, I am also an Asian-American who grew up in conservative Orange County.

Are you going to add Wuvable Oaf or any of these other books to your reading list?

(image: Fantagraphics)

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