RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning with RuPaul's Drag Race, edited by Lindsay Bryde & Tommy Mayberry, won the 2022 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, claiming 39% of the popular vote and "putting a clean pair of stilettos between it and the second-place finisher, What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada," the Bookseller reported. While the final margin of victory was 14%, the two titles "were neck-and-neck for most of the Diagram election cycle until a late surge saw the former title pull ahead, perhaps mirroring Danny Beard's shock win over Cheddar Gorgeous in the recently concluded fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race UK."
Horace Bent, the Bookseller columnist and administrator of the prize, said: "It was one of the most exciting Diagram seasons of recent memory with a battle for number one that was as tight as Violet Chachki's corset or Shangela's tuck. So con-drag-ulations to RuPedagogies of Realness for its well-deserved triumph. And commiserations to What Nudism Exposes; alas, I think voters in the end were put off by its author's clear naked ambition."
The Diagram was originally conceived in 1978 by Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of publishing solutions firm the Diagram Group, to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. There is no prize for the winning author or publisher, but traditionally a "passable bottle of claret" is given to the nominator of the winning entry.