Dayne Ogilvie Prize Winners (from left to right): Farzana Doctor, Amber Dawn, and Debra Anderson.

Amber Dawn (1974-) is quickly becoming a Canadian icon as a Vancouver-based award-winning experimental writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and outspoken advocate for women, members of the LGBT community, and sex workers.  Dawn’s cutting edge, humanizing portraits of Vancouver’s sex work community express her longstanding activism.  She is very open about her own conflicting and overlapping identities as a retired sex worker who self-identifies as a queer feminist activist.  In literature, she is a triple threat as a writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.  Her life, art, and politics infuse a feminist poetics.

Born in 1974, Dawn was raised in the small community of Crystal Beach in Fort Erie, Ontario.  She describes her parents as American hippies and war resisters who left New York and crossed the border in 1969 to settle on land in Fort Erie bought as a “sanctuary” with friends (Memoir 125-126).  After graduating from high school in 1992, Dawn felt restless and out of place in small town Ontario and, in a classic gesture of youthful ennui, left with a visiting carnival to travel around North America.  Like many youth, she gravitated to the climate and politics of the west coast where she spent many years as a Vancouver sex worker on the streets and in massage parlours, while actively engaging in community activism and securing a liberal arts degree and an MFA in creative writing at UBC (140).  She eventually retired from sex work to focus on her writing and activism.

Dawn’s film Girl on Girl: A Documentary premiered at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival in 2004 where it won the Zed People’s Choice Short Film Award, and was then screened at international festivals and incorporated into the gender studies program at Concordia University (Yuen).  Along with Vancouver writer and activist Trish Kelly, she also co-edited the short-story collection, With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (2005).  Her first novel, the supernatural fantasy called Sub Rosa, was published in 2010 (2011 in the United States).  This volume, which was based on her own experience in sex work, went on to win a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction from the Lambda Literary Foundation.  Dawn’s next effort was rather different, the editing of an anthology of horror stories, Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire (2009).  It was similarly nominated for a Lambda.  In 2012, she was awarded the Dayne Ogilvie Prize presented to an emerging LGBT author by the Writers’ Trust of Canada.  From 2008 to 2012, Dawn worked as the program director at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival.  In 2013,  she began teaching ‘speculative fiction,’ an umbrella term for different types of supernatural literature, at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC.  In 2013, she published the explicitly autobiographical How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir, which reflects on sex work, activism, and art, and survival in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES), a community that she suggests we collectively exploit, repress, and stigmatize.  She remains an author, activist, and teacher.

Dawn has an impressive grassroots track record.  She promotes an intersectional feminist perspective that takes into account race, class, and sexual orientation. Her contributions challenge a city that has become notorious for sex trafficking and violence against sex workers.  She is frank about the stigmas associated with prostitution even within lesbian and activist communities.  In 1995, she was part of a feminist anti-violence collective in Vancouver that she remembers as anti-sex workers, despite her resistance (Memoir 51).  In time, however, she also witnessed feminist activists gradually acknowledge and participate in sex work advocacy (Memoir 51).  Dawn lived through the disappearance of addict and sex worker Sheila Catherine Egan (1978-?) and the horrific murder of her friend Shelby Tom (1963-2003).  The death of Tom, an Asian transgender sex worker, highlighted the complex forms of prejudice experienced by sex workers.

In response to the difficulties of being taken seriously as an advocate of sex worker rights, Dawn carved out what she describes as her own multifaceted “ghetto feminism, a street social justice” (Memoir 46).  This saw her doing outreach work during outbreaks of diseases such as hepatitis and syphilis and working with immigrant sex workers (Memoir 52).  She participated in the Change the [Criminal] Code Committee, an activist group that championed decriminalizing prostitution (Memoir 53).  In 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, Dawn travelled throughout the United States with the Sex Workers’ Art Show, an activist performance art group run by participants in the sex industry (Yuen).  She has won multiple awards for activism, including the Hero of the Year award from the Vancouver LGBT newspaper, Xtra! West in 2008.

Her landmark volume How Poetry Saved My Life joins modern classics such as Angela Davis’ Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973), and Evelyn Lau’s Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989), which mark autobiography as a site of personal and collective liberation.  How Poetry Saved My Life challenges readers to rethink assumptions about sex work, our cities and ourselves.  Combining poetry and essays, it avoids a homogenous or linear narrative structure.  Very importantly, she refuses to succumb to clichés of sensationalism or sympathy despite the powerfully dramatic story of personal survival and artistic and political growth.  Stopping in the midst of her account of a narrow escape from a violent John shortly before she retires from the street trade, she asks the “dear reader” not “to worry about [her] life” (Memoir 117).  She continues, “[r]emember that pity is an emotion that doesn’t really get us anywhere.  And we (you and I) will get somewhere with this, won’t we?” (Memoir 117).  Dawn interrupts the passive voyeurism and consumption involved with the sex trade, making us recognize how easy it is to be complicit in dehumanizing sex workers.  Instead, she invites identification and engagement with the daily realities of women in the trade, and a sense of the complexity—the ups and downs, the strengths and vulnerabilities—that she lived and witnessed first hand.

In the fallout of endemic violence against women in the DTES, with its dozens of related serial killings and unsolved disappearances, Dawn asks her audiences to recognize that challenging collective trauma requires acknowledgement and mourning (Memoir 117).  This does not mean passive (and passing) judgment or sympathy, but rather sustained listening, debate, and dialogue.  In a move that echoes influential humanitarians such as Canadian Jean Vanier (1928-) and even Mother Teresa (1910-1997), she argues in her essay entitled “How to Bury Our Dead,” that humanizing society’s most stigmatized is the first step towards restoring our common humanity and forging a humane society.  Silence in the face of violence is in fact complicity and Dawn’s story invites us to break that silence.

Bibliography

Bartley, Jim. “Amber Dawn’s New Memoir a Subtly Pitched Call to Arms.” The Globe and Mail. Phillip Crawley. 24 May. 2013. Web. 16 July. 2013.

Dawn, Amber. “Does a Lesbian Need a Vagina Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle?  Or, Would the ‘Real’ Lesbian Please Stand Up!” Canadian Woman Studies 24.2 (2005): 92-101.

- – -. How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013.

- – -. Interview by Leah Horlick. Radar Productions. N.p. 6 March. 2013. Web. 16 July. 2013.

—. Sub Rosa. Vancouver: Arsenal Press, 2010.

Takeuchi, Craig. “Amber Dawn Leaves Vancouver Queer Film Festival for Literary Life.” Straight.com. Vancouver Free Press. 27 August. 2012. 16 July. 2013.

Yuen, Joanna. “Joanna Yuen on Amber Dawn. Amber Dawn Dances the Vivacious Life of a Queer Editor. Joanna Yuen Spotlights her Amazing Talents.” Douglass College. N.p. October. 2010. Web.  16 July. 2013.

*This quote comes from Leah Horlick’s interview with Amber Dawn in which Dawn states: “Writing is activism. There’s no other reason for me to write nonfiction, I think, than making some sort of statement that I hope will help the communities that I have in mind when I’m writing.”

click to enlarge

I can say without a doubt that Amber Dawn is the only author I’ve ever read who’s quoted Sylvia Plath while using a Sharpie to colour in the scuff marks on her Value Village stripper pumps. She’s also one of the bravest voices I’ve ever heard. How Poetry Saved My Life is an undeniably intense and important collection of prose and verse in which Dawn, a former sex worker, details her claw from the streets to speech. Her poems have the distinct orality of spoken word—there are profound silences here, unorthodox white spaces, and chilling visuals. But there is also love. As a LGBT rights activist, Dawn refuses to be victimized, and her work speaks for her. Much like her novel Sub Rosa, this book is dripping with as much sexuality as purpose. She gives voice to a mostly invisible population, and that voice will shatter you.

Poetic License

Written by Alice Lawlor.

Personal meets political in Amber Dawn’s memoir of a hustler

How do you follow a debut novel that was dubbed a cult classic in the making? If you’re Amber Dawn, acclaimed author of Sub Rosa, it’s with a brilliant warts-and-all memoir. How Poetry Saved My Life (Arsenal Pulp Press) tells the story of Dawn’s former life as a sex worker in Vancouver using a magical mix of poetry, prose and polemic. She spoke to IN Toronto about what inspired the book, and the transformative power of writing it.

What moved you to write a more personal book after Sub Rosa?
The book’s title, How Poetry Saved My Life, is by no means figurative. It quite literally addresses the primary impetus for writing this book. Creative writing—especially poetry and memoir—has been both my lifeline and the thread that connects me with a larger community of voices, in particular those of other women, survivors and queer folks. My own voice is that of a queer sex worker—an experiential identity that is often misunderstood. It is my goal to make issues of sex work and sexuality more tangible and human. I’m pretty tired of seeing that the majority of writing about sex workers is academic or critical narratives, rather than narratives of experience. I also want to demonstrate that marginalized or queer stories are literary stories. I feel a sense of duty and a joy in speaking up.

How did the book come together?
Well, I certainly did not say to myself, ‘I want to write a mixed genre prose and poetry book about sex work.’ I have read a number of sex-work memoirs—some that I treasure and some that I feel sensationalize sex work—and I knew that I wasn’t capable of writing my story with a traditional narrative structure. I don’t think that most people’s lives are that tidy, and mine certainly isn’t.
I started writing bits and pieces, mostly therapeutic literature at first. Then, I wrote pieces to submit to sex worker anthologies or other feminist publications. I would often write just to be included in any publication or festival with other sex workers’ voices. I was so desperate to be a part of a vital conversation that is all too often silenced or stigmatized. And eventually realized I had a book’s worth of writing. I’m grateful that my memoir was written over a longer period of time. It gave me time to reflect upon and reconcile with my experiences, and to truly stand proud with my story.

Female empowerment is a thread that runs through the book. How did you maintain such a strong sense of your own sexual identity?
I credit other women authors for allowing me to draw inspiration from them. Beth Goobie, Lynn Crosby, Larissa Lai, Nalo Hopkinson, Barbara Gowdy, Hiromi Goto, Persimmon Blackbridge are some Canadian authors I adore. What do all these authors have in common, you may ask? They all unflinchingly understand that complex identities and sexualities and literature make wonderful companions. I wanted to be balls-to-the-wall sharp and strong like these authors. As a writer (and a human) I am keenly interested in the relationship between empowerment and vulnerability. I’ve explored this relationship so darn much that “tough” and “tender” have become synonymous for me. If I want to show my reader strength, I must show them true vulnerability.

What was it like being a lesbian in the world of sex work?
Being a queer femme has meant that I have the privilege of being part of a community of social justice-minded folks. I have been out about being a sex worker for a very long time, largely due to the inclusive nature of my communities. I also love that my communities are keen on mentoring and information and skill sharing. This queer cultural value of peer-to-peer support has really helped me face some barriers, like doing my taxes or completing my grad school application. There are certainly anti-sex-work lesbians in our communities, too, but I have a highly developed knack for blocking out bullsh*t and focusing on loving ally-ship.

What do you hope people will take away from the book?
I wrote this book with sex workers and survivors in mind. I think a sex worker is one of many examples of a stigmatized identity where the speaker—in this case, me—takes a risk and sticks their neck out to tell a story. So I wrote with those brave voices in mind. Further to this, I consider the majority of us to be brave voices. The survivor in me sees the survivor in so many of us. And so, if an entire population, like sex workers, is made silent or stigmatized, then who else is also being made invisible? Many of us receive societal messages that it’s not safe to present our whole selves. So what I hope readers will take from the book is less of an understanding of the politics of sex work, but for them to hear the call to speak up. I spoke up about sex work (and am all the better for it) and likewise they may choose to speak up about themselves.

I’m thrilled to be performing new work at the Vancouver Art/Book Fair.

Here is a teaser interview by Stephanie Fung of Project Space:

Sky Cathedral by Louise Nevelson, inspiration for Amber Dawn’s performance at VA/BF

Artist Profile: Amber Dawn

by Stephanie Fung

Amber Dawn, who will be performing ”I Fell in Love with Black” at the 2013 Vancouver Art/Book Fair, is a writer based in Vancouver. Her performance is the first component to be released in OCW #21: Feminisms, a five-part publication curated by Tracy Stefanucci that explores women’s representation in the visual and literary arts, and publishing. Each segment of the intermittently published artist magazine will be envisioned by a different female artist and will include an in-person engagement as well as a print component. Other artists featured in the project include leannej, Heidi Nagtegaal, Alex Leslie and listen chen.

Adapted from the short story, “The Nevelson” (forthcoming in Plenitude Magazine), “I Fell in Love with Black” tells the story of romantic attraction between seven-year-old loner Bailey and Sky Cathedral, a Louise Nevelson sculpture housed at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Told as a magical realism script reading and slide show, author Amber Dawn celebrates women artists and love in strange spaces.

Dawn’s latest novel, Sub Rosa, won the Lambda Literary Award. She has also published the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life and edited the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn. She was the 2012 winner of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers and currently teaches Speculative Fiction writing at Douglas College. 

Project Space: How would you describe your experience of working as a female artist and writer? Has this experience been shaped or made more complex by other labels you identify with?

Amber Dawn: This question is always a humdinger for me. My life is so utterly that of a woman’s. I’ve never even attempted “playing in the man’s world” so to speak. I grew up around women with very few adult men around and even fewer male mentors or role models. My mother was a living caricature of a starving artist turned zany high school art teacher. She introduced me to the practice of taking particular note of the work of women artists found at my favourite art gallery, the Albright Knox in Buffalo, NY.

As an adult I’ve worked in women and queer-driven spaces: women’s centres, anti-violence services, feminist presses/publishers, artist-run-collectives, etc. I’m married to a woman. When I write, I have women readers in mind first and foremost. I’m living in a very womb-like metaphor, I suppose, by choice. I believe women, especially queer women, are uniquely situated to question the world and the structures that hold power, and to express themselves from both a place of great strength and tender vulnerability.

PS: What was your personal interpretation and initial response to the broad prompt of “women’s representation in the visual and literary arts, and publishing” for the Feminisms project?

AD: I immediately thought of hearing the Rosalind Prize for Canadian Women Writers announced last year (in October 2012). The first line in the Globe & Mail read, “How is a new literary prize born? Out of frustration, it seems . . .” The article then goes on to outline some of the gender disparity in publishing, literary criticism and prizes. For example, there have been only twelve women Nobel Prize winners for Literature since 1901. We are surrounded by statistics like this. Only four women have been nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, and only one has won. Women artists make up less than 12% of the Tate Modern’s Collection. And so we—women artists—should be frustrated.

PS: How did you come up with the idea for this performance?

AD: Recently, a friend asked me to write a piece of fan fiction about a contemporary artist or artwork. Intimidated, I almost refused the project because I am not schooled in art history. What do I really know about art? But I drew upon my personal childhood experience of frequenting the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, and wrote a fan fiction story called “The Nevelson” about falling in love with a Louise Nevelson sculpture. My performance, “I Fell in Love with Black,” is an adaptation of that story.

PS: Does your performance challenge any assumptions people may have about feminism or identity?

AD: I find Louise Nevelson a particularly heady artist. When I was researching for this performance, I’d often become overwhelmed while listening to her speak at interviews and appearances.  However, to look at her work, to me, is to be invited in. Her work is somehow so elegant, yet so accessible. My performance demonstrates this accessibility. That art can be open and inviting and simple. It’s okay to “feel” art, and not “critique” or “understand” it. My performance protagonist is a seven-year-old girl, full of wonder and fledgling emotions.

PS: How would you describe your own personal feminism?

AD: Feminism is a broad and dynamic approach to life. So broad and dynamic that I could easily dedicate pages upon pages to describing how my feminism propels me through this world. The question is too big. Instead I’ll talk a bit about the feminism found in my performance:

Louise Nevelson is an outstanding example of a woman who made it in a “man’s world.” Her earlier sculptural work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art (this is one of the fine art institutions that the Guerrilla Girls  continually take to task for lack of women artist representation) and by the late 1950s MoMA had begun to purchase her work for their permanent collection.  From the Whitney to the Venice Biennale, she garnered recognition, but even with this success her work was often deemed “masculine” by critics. Nevelson continually challenged “masculine” and “feminine” ideas of art. In an interview with the Feminist Art Journal she declared, “I am a woman’s liberation.”

But my performance’s protagonist is not Louise Nevelson. It is a seven-year-old girl from a poor single-mom household who is discovering a creative voice of her own. For me, the little girl is the real feminist hero of my performance. She demonstrates that feminism belongs to us all, and that feminist thinking and activism can be quiet and humble, just as well as grand and famous.

Top: Sky Cathedral by Louise Nevelson

I am thrilled to be appearing at Word on the Street on Sunday September 29, 2013 at 11:45 a.m. I’ve posted the entire Poetry Tent Sunday Schedule because I’m reading alongside the most magical poets I can imagine. Check out the line up and be sure to visit the Poetry in Transit bus. I’m also a 2013 Poetry in Transit poet!

Poetry Tent

Established and emerging poets; witty, evocative, tender, cerebral, political, and funny

11:00 am Mark Cochrane
Cat (above/ground press $3.00)
11:15 am Christine Leclerc
Oilywood (Nomados $10.00)
11:30 am Jen Currin
The Ends (Nomados $10.00)
11:45 am Amber Dawn
How Poetry Saved My Life (Arsenal Pulp Press $15.95)
12:00 pm Mariner Janes
The Monument Cycles (Talonbooks $16.95)
12:15 pm George Stanley
After Desire (New Star Books $18.00)
12:30 pm Peter Culley
Parkway (New Star Books $18.00)
12:45 pm Wanda John-Kehewin
In The Dog House (Talonbooks $16.95)
1:00 pm bill bissett
hungree throat (Talonbooks $17.95)
1:15 pm Catherine Greenwood
The Lost Letters (Brick Books $20)
1:30 pm Pamela Porter
Late Moon (Ronsdale Press $15.95)
1:45 pm Kim Minkus
Tuft (BookThug $18.00)
2:00 pm Kevan “Scruffmouth” Cameron, Adelene da Soul, and Nicardo “Charlie Bobus” Murray
The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry (Frontenac House $21.95)
2:30 pm Dennis E. Bolen
Black Liquor: Poems (Caitlin Press $ $16.95)
2:45 pm klipschutz
This Drawn & Quartered Moon (Anvil Press $18.00)
3:00 pm Poetry in Transit
Stephen Collis, Dina Del Bucchia, Patrick Friesen, Al Rempel, Russell Thornton, and Tiffany Stone. Hosted by Evelyn Lau.
P.S. Don’t forget to hop on the bus. The Poetry in Transit Bus will be on the corner of Homer and Georgia this year.
4:00 pm Evelyn Lau
A Grain of Rice (Oolichan Books $17.95)
4:15 pm Brad Cran
Ink on Paper (Nightwood Editions $18.95)
4:30 pm World Poetry Reading Series
Hosts Ariadne Sawyer, Bong Ja Ahn. Featured poets Kagan Goh, Una Bruhns. The World Poetry Woven Word Tapestry multilingual segments by Tommy Tao (Cantonese), Una Bruhns (Afrikaner), Kagan Goh (English), Winnie Cheung (Mandarin), Bong Ja Ahn (Korean), and Anita Aguirre Nieveras (Tagalog).

Off the Richter Scale: Oh, Canada!

October 13, 2013 - 3:30 PM

Hotel Rex
562 Sutter St.

Free

Off the Richter Scale looks north for a session focused on Canadian authors.

Save iCal reminder to your calendar.

Hotel Rex
562 Sutter St. - San Francisco, CA

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Fall book preview: Festivals and big releases highlight the upcoming book season

Vancouver Writers’ Festiva;

Oct. 22 to 27 | Granville Island

Tickets and info: writersfest.bc.ca

The Vancouver Writers Fest brings 100 writers from around the world to Granville Island to read from their books and participate in active discussions, along with other entertainment designed to delight readers and writers alike. Highlights from this year’s festival include Margaret Atwood and Joseph Boyden, along with B.C. authors Douglas Coupland, Meg Tilly, Theodora Armstrong, Amber Dawn, D.W. Wilson, Brad Cran, Shaena Lambert, Mary Novick and Roberta Rich.

Scott Turow, who wrote the huge bestseller Presumed Innocent in 1987, will appear to talk about his latest book, Identical.

There’s also a focus on non-fiction writers, including literary critic John Freeman, American investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author Alan Weisman (The World Without Us), and George Packer, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Thea Unwinding. Canadian journalist Amanda Lindout, who spent a terrifying 460 days in the hands of Somali kidnappers, will appear at the festival with a memoir of her experience. She will be interviewed by Vancouver Sun reporter Denise Ryan. Author Ross King will appear in conversation with CBC ombudsman and former Vancouver Sun managing editor Kirk LaPointe, talking about his latest book Leonardo and the Last Supper, which focuses on the period of Leonardo da Vinci’s life when he became successful.

Visit writersfest.bc.ca for complete details and to view the program.

From Coping to Community: Amber Dawn’s How Poetry Saved My Life

Amber Dawn. How Poetry Saved My Life. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013.
~Reviewed by Jennifer Delisle

In a striking moment in How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber Dawn describes how, while caring for a drunk co-worker at the massage parlour where she works, she composes a line of a poem in her head: “Maybe this is the precise moment when poetry becomes my primary way to cope. Something lifts inside my body—that buoyancy that comes when I observe my life as art.” This tension between despair and hope is palpable throughout the narrative. The book is, at times, difficult to read, as Dawn navigates a world of sex work, violence, drug use, and “the isolation of queer youth.” Yet there is also profound resilience, love, community, and creativity in these pages.

From the title, one might expect a story of how literary success or post-secondary education helped Dawn escape life as a sex worker. The reality is much more complex, and being “saved” here is not as simple as being saved from the poverty or addiction that we tend to associate with a life of prostitution. As she writes in the title poem:

There wasn’t a voice
from above
no tunnel of light
I didn’t awaken in a hospital room to doctors cheering,
you’re a lucky young lady
you almost didn’t make it

Instead Dawn writes of the alienation and ambivalence that accompanies the “class ladder,” of the relationship between literature and advocacy, and of the complexities of speaking out. Poetry becomes a means of coping, reflection, and activism.

Dawn’s story is told as much in its form as in its content. Weaving between memoir and verse, the book embodies the way that poetry has influenced her life. Many of the poems play with repetition and lines plucked from epigraphs, techniques that highlight the imposition of poetic form, without undermining an inherent accessibility and narrative power in the lines.

Her writing style impedes any temptation to sensationalize her story. Dawn interrupts an account of a violent date with metanarrative: “My dear reader, if only I could talk to you in more than a narrative direct address and break the fourth-wall monologue. I wish this were a two-way conversation. I’d like to ask if you are worried about the female protagonist (me) in this nonfiction story.” With such passages Dawn refuses to allow her readers to be passive voyeurs in the seedy underbelly of Vancouver. “I’d like to know why you are worried,” she continues. “How big is this worry? Do I (the protagonist) represent something larger than the 3,000-odd words of this story, the 150-odd pages of this book?” This passage becomes a kind of challenge to readers; we are asked not to simply consume these pages but also to reflect on our own assumptions, political beliefs, and experiences.

Indeed Dawn ends the introduction with an invitation to her reader to “explore your own story of survival, speaking out, finding community, and treasuring your own experiences.” While she cannot quite create that “two-way conversation” she craves, in this way she includes her readers in her own literary community, fostering understanding, empathy, and insight.
Jennifer Delisle is a writer, editor and academic in Edmonton. She has published widely in magazines and journals, and is a member of Room Magazine’s editorial collective. She is also the author of The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-migration. www.jenniferdelisle.ca.

The team at Word Vancouver is thrilled to announce an innovative new festival event: the Automated Poetry Project. Word Vancouver will transform ordinary vending machines into poetry dispensers!

Poems will be placed in vending machine capsules and dispensed for just a toonie each. The machines will be in multiple locations in downtown Vancouver during the month of September 2013.

Impact of the Automated Poetry Project:

The Automated Poetry Project will help raise the profiles of Vancouver poets and bring excellent poetry to every day locations such as coffee shops. As a supporter, you will make a meaningful contribution to Vancouver’s literary community and will participate in an important aspect of Canada’s diverse, unique artistic culture.

Locations:

Following our fundraising efforts hosted on Indiegogo, the Automated Poetry Project raised $1,085. Thanks to this support, five Automated Poetry vending machines have been purchased, refurbished, and re-homed to locations in  Vancouver.

1. Bean Around the World (175 West Hastings Street)
2. Paper Hound Bookshop (344 West Pender Street)
3. Banyen Books & Sound (3608 West 4th Avenue)
4. book’mark, the Vancouver Public Library store (350 West Georgia Street)
5. Pulpfiction Books, (2754 West Broadway)

The following poets and publishers graciously supplied the poems for the Automated Poetry Project:

• Jordan Abel
• Yulia Aleynikova
• Reneltta Arluk
• Ghia Aweida
• Elizabeth Bachinsky
• John Wall Barger
• John Barton
• Denis Bolen
• Stephanie Bolster
• Tim Bowling
• Kate Braid
• Kim Clark
• Brad Cran
• Jen Currin
• Marita Dachsel
• Ruth Dato
• Amber Dawn
• Rodney DeCroo
• Henry Doyle
• Karen Enns
• Patrick Friesen
• Catherine Greenwood
• David Groulx
• Erold Harold
• Jennica Harper
• Mohamed Helaly
• Anne Hopkinson
• Michael Kenyon
• Cynthia Woodman Kerkham
• Larissa Lai
• GP Lainsbury
• Fiona Tinwei Lam
• Robyn Livingstone
• Nicole Markotic
• Sharon McCartney
• Andrew McEwan
• kevin mcpherson eckhoff
• Kim Minkus
• Andrea Nikki
• Arleen Pare
• Al Rempel
• Madeline Sonik
• George Stanley
• Susan Steudel
• Jacqueline Turner
• Ursula Vaira
• Calvin Wharton
• Rita Wong
• Jan Zwicky

• Anvil Press
• BookLand Press
• BookThug
• Brick Books
• Caitlin Press
• Coach House Books
• ECW Press
• Gaspereau Press
• Inanna Publications
• Invisible Publishing
• New Star Books
• Nightwood Editions
• Otter Press
• Palimpsest Press
• Talonbooks

City of Vancouver Book Award nominations announced

Poet recalls her earlier struggles

Amber Dawn’s new book explores her life as a sex worker through poetry and essays, and was recently nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Award. editors note: a tilt shift lens was used
(John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

MARSHA LEDERMAN

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Oct. 18 2013, 7:22 PM EDT

A straight-up cup of coffee will cost you almost $3.50 at the chic café next to Pigeon Park, where Amber Dawn sits marking her students’ papers. She is pretty sure that some 15 years ago, when she lived across the street – you can see her old building through the large window she is sitting next to – this place was a fried chicken joint.

 

“You could get chicken and fries and a pickle for five bucks or something like that,” she says. “I remember I loved coming here because the old men that hung out here told me I looked like Marilyn Monroe. I was blonde at the time and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, I do; buy me some chicken.’”

As the Downtown Eastside has changed, so has Ms. Dawn’s life – from small-town Ontario girl to Vancouver sex trade worker to poet, author, teacher.

She tells her story in How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir.

It is not a detailed, chronological read. The thin volume of poems and essays is thick with truths rather than facts, with passages that express much with few words – about how she came to writing, the women in her life (Ms. Dawn is a lesbian), her sex work.

“… I have been asked many times how this ‘prostitution thing’ happened to me. Often the question is augmented with what I am meant to take as a compliment: How did this ‘prostitution thing’ happen to such a nice girl/such a smart girl/an exceptional girl/a girl with such potential?” reads one passage.

In an interview, Ms. Dawn, now 39, filled out the details of her life only hinted at between the lines of her book. She grew up in Fort Erie, Ont., in the Crystal Beach community, with its famous amusement park. Her father was a ride operator before becoming a teacher.

She left town at 17 and made her way to Vancouver. She is very matter-of-fact about how she got into prostitution. With no job and little money, it was difficult to resist the constant propositions she received near her East Vancouver home.

“What would the average person say if they’re living so close to the bone? I was never homeless and I’m so thankful for that, but it took everything I had to be able to stay inside,” she explains. “I think that many people, if they were given the option: do you want a meal today for a service, a moment that will take maybe 15 minutes, what will you do? Most people are going to choose the meal. It’s just survival.”

As she continued her sex work, she also gave serious thought to the things she wanted out of life – chief among them, an education.

She was making good money, with some wealthy regular clients. She saved up, stashing cash in her apartment. (To this day, she says, she will take a book from the shelf and find a $100 bill inside.)

Where once she had typed résumés on a typewriter from a dumpster, she was able to buy a computer at London Drugs.

Looking for a trade, she studied theatre at Douglas College, thinking she would go into lighting design. She had to take a theatre history course and write a short play. Her instructor told her she could write. She took a poetry course. She was introduced to the work of poet Kate Braid and became a devotee.

In Ms. Braid, she found a champion. Ms. Dawn – still in her fried chicken days – signed up for Ms. Braid’s summer poetry class at UBC and excelled. Ms. Braid wrote her a glowing letter of reference. Ms. Dawn got her MFA in creative writing at UBC. The money she earned as a prostitute helped put her through school; she often paid in cash. “I lived the double life,” she says. Her professors knew, she believes, based on what she wrote about – sex work, addiction. Her clients knew too. “They knew that they were becoming patrons of the [arts],” she laughs.

A very bad date in an ocean-view house documented in the memoir helped her give up the work for good. Five years ago, she met Ms. Right. They got married last year.

She published her first book, the novel Sub Rosa, in 2010. She won awards.

She faced writing the memoir – exposing her life without the armour of the fiction label – with some trepidation.

“I thought about my family, I thought about my wife, I thought about what it will be like just to go to my neighbourhood coffee shop and know that other people have read this book. But I also thought … I have been given a platform. I’m not going to neglect it.”

Next week, Ms. Dawn will be at the Vancouver Writers Fest with the memoir – which was recently nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Award. She now teaches creative writing at Douglas College and undergrad poetry at UBC. She is working on her third book.

“I got very lucky,” she says. “The moment I screamed for help, there were people looking out for me. … Not everyone’s heard when they write a poem and certainly not everyone’s heard when they ask for help. So I understand how privileged I am.”

Canada Reads Top 40: Explore the books

What is the one novel that could change Canada?

That’s the question we put to you, Canada, earlier this year. And you answered! Thousands of recommendations poured in from across the country. We ran this data through the Canada Reads machine to come up with the Canada Reads 2014 Top 40. Check out the novels that made it below.

Your work isn’t over yet! We need your help narrowing this list down to a Top 10.

Cast your vote by 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday November 3rd. 

The Top 10 will be revealed on Tuesday, November 12th on Q and right here on the Canada Reads website. Until then, get to know the Top 40 better below.

Want a printable list to take to your library or bookstore? Get the list here (PDF).

Canada Reads Top 40: Explore the books

What is the one novel that could change Canada?

That’s the question we put to you, Canada, earlier this year. And you answered! Thousands of recommendations poured in from across the country. We ran this data through the Canada Reads machine to come up with the Canada Reads 2014 Top 40. Check out the novels that made it below.

Your work isn’t over yet! We need your help narrowing this list down to a Top 10.

Cast your vote by 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday November 3rd. 

The Top 10 will be revealed on Tuesday, November 12th on Q and right here on the Canada Reads website. Until then, get to know the Top 40 better below.

Want a printable list to take to your library or bookstore? Get the list here (PDF).

Amber Dawn, Nancy Jo Cullen and Abdellah Taïa at The Vancouver Writers Festival, October 23, 2013.

“You can’t be afraid to read your own writing,” Amber Dawn says.

The local poet and award-winning author tells herself this before doing public readings. To prepare, she even records her readings to play back and to show herself: It’s okay, I can do this; this is my story. But no matter how prepared she is, she always gets nervous, and that is something Dawn thinks will never really go away.

However, if Amber Dawn was nervous to read in her very first panel at the Vancouver Writers Festival on Wednesday night, it sure as heck didn’t show. She captured the entire room with two beautifully vivid and melodic poems from her latest book How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013).

Although this is her first year participating as one of the writers in the festival, Dawn says she’s been coming to the festival for years, discovering new authors, sharing ideas and sparking inspiration and conversation.

On this particular panel, Dawn was one of three established queer authors to read their works, discuss what it means to be a queer writer producing stories outside of the hetero norm and reflect on how their stories and readerships go ‘beyond queer’.

Panel moderator Anne Fleming asked all three authors for their thoughts on this new queer-themed addition to the festival and about the name of the event in particular. Poet and short-story author Nancy Jo Cullen, who read from her anthology Canary (Biblioasis, 2013), wants her writing to go ‘beyond queer’, but at the same time, she doesn’t: “I’d like for more people to look at our work who aren’t queer, but I also want to wave the flag.” Dawn grew up without these stories and felt a need to tell them. She wrote both of her books for her community, so anyone else who reads them, well, that’s just icing on the cake. Openly gay Moroccan author Abdellah Taïa, who lives and writes out of France, believes that to be a homosexual, you see the world differently. It becomes your duty to share that vision, your uniquely queer experience and voice with the world.

The night was rich with humour and metaphor. Abdellah Taïa brought us to laughter with his endearing personal accounts of growing up in Morocco, fantasizing about French philosopher Michel Foucault and believing for a short period in his youth that he was the only homosexual in Morocco. Nancy Jo Cullen’s comical short story “Valerie’s Bush” moved one audience member so much, the person felt compelled to share her own pubic hair-cutting anecdote.

Overall, Beyond Queer was a delightful event to attend; the atmosphere was light, the environment safe, and the writing shared beautifully distinct: quirky, queer and engaging.

Although this was Abdellah Taïa’s only event at the festival, Nancy Jo Cullen will each be appearing in two more panels throughout the week, Looking For Love (Oct. 26) and The Sunday Brunch (Oct. 27).

Regardless of whether you’ve loved, hated, or never read the works at all, there is something so powerful and magical about hearing works read aloud by the authors themselves. The creators and Gods of these literary worlds stand before us, open and vulnerable; they give us their hearts, their words, their darlings, and then, they even answer our questions too.

“That girl that I was” – Moving memoirs at Event 49

“I didn’t need a mother but I wanted to know who my mother was,” Priscilla Uppal candidly declared during In the Beginning (Event 49). When Uppal was seven years old her mother fled to Brazil. Her father had become a quadriplegic five years earlier. Twenty years later Uppal happened across her mother’s website. Uppal told the audience, “I was in shock and did what any writer would do, I immediately applied for funding.” She was awarded funding and booked a flight to Brazil to meet her mother for the first time as an adult. This is the subject of her latest work Projection: Encounters with my Runaway Mother, a Governor General’s Literary Award finalist. When moderator Andreas Schroeder asked, “When did you stop looking at that enterprise as daughter and start looking at it as a writer?” Uppal replied, “Almost from the beginning”, finding that writing was a way of contending with the astonishing experience. “Family relationships are over-sentimentalized” Uppal continued, and explaining that we all want that “Oprah moment” which in her case was not possible. Taking ten years to craft this compelling account, Uppal asked herself at many points if she was being fair to those she depicted. Then Uppal shared a sentiment that resonated with many in the audience based on murmurs of acknowledgement and a spontaneous round of applause which followed her disclosure. Uppal explained that writing this book allowed her to come to terms with not including individuals in her life, with letting go of guilt and recognizing the impact of both seen and unseen trauma and pain on relationships.

There are certainly no “Oprah moments” in Amber Dawn’s memoir of sex work on Vancouver’s downtown eastside in How Poetry Saved my Life: A Hustler’s Memoir. Rather, this tale is a slow burn of narrative interspersed with poetry, an account of a prolonged struggle for survival, and story populated with women, many of whom did not emerge safely on the other side. Said Dawn, “I’m not interested in voyeurism or pity or becoming the voice of a social debate”…“what I try to show through a lot of my work is that we’re just all in this shit show together.” When asked about the impact of the experience of writing this memoir, Dawn admitted to a certain degree of disassociation until the moment she came across an old poem, hours before her final manuscript was due. Her eye caught upon handwriting which she recognized as her own, at the bottom of the page listing her old Carral Street address as well as a phone number for the womens centre. She didn’t have a phone at that time but she knew that someone at the centre could find her if she needed to be reached. This artefact, a note penned by her own hand years ago, triggered a memory of a younger version of herself, commuting from the downtown eastside to the University of British Columbia. In that moment, Dawn said, “I felt for that girl that I was.”

Jowita Bydlowska gave away little, but many in the audience clearly felt for the girl/woman that she once was as she joined the panel to discuss her debut memoir, Drunk Mom. The audience appreciated and rewarded her candour with warm applause following her reading. At times her voice waivered as she twisted her body into the mike, leaning on the podium, however she gathered momentum when she arrived at the pivotal moment in her reading, a powerfully rendered scene where she recognizes herself in the desperate addicts and drunks she passes when walking home. Later in the event Bydlowska revealed, “I feel very exposed sometimes, during readings, taking questions from the audience- for me it’s quite emotional.” When Schroeder her what she discovered through writing the memoir and what the process brought out, Bydlowska explained, “I pitched this book as a work of fiction so I had already put up a wall.” It was only afterwards while editing that the weight of her experience became visceral. Bydlowska reveals that pain of encountering new mothers with their infants, stating, “I missed that entire year. I don’t have those memories.”

The preservation of memories is what compelled Helen Humphreys to write a memoir of grief, what began as a letter to her brother when he died at the age of 45 of pancreatic cancer. Said Humphreys, “I really wanted to not forget him. I know, he said himself, he did not want to be forgotten.” By writing Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother she also wanted to reveal what she describes as the grief mind. Before Humphreys began her reading, she commented that it was strange to read aloud in the second person. While that may be, this is precisely why her reading was so moving, the impact of the direct address was staggering. Her prose is raw but poetically articulate encapsulating the notion that although a loved one dies, your relationship with the deceased continues. Humphreys’ reading began with the first line of the book, “This is what happened after you died. We took the plastic bag with your clothes…” Anyone who has been at the bedside of a loved one who has passed will recognize the ludicrous way one suddenly contends with the arbitrary disposal of personal effects. One may recognize the experience of exiting the hospital and entering the world with the knowledge that a loved one is no longer here, feeling both numb and raw.  This memoir will break you open. I took to reading it in snippets on lunch breaks at my place of work to ward off tears. And to think Humphreys may have never shared this story. Humphreys explained, “I published a short piece to see if it was interesting to anyone other than myself.”

Clearly what is miraculous about all memoirs is not the subject matter, the prose, the reveal, but the way in which each account speaks to a reader somewhere. Loss, addiction, family, tragedy- life at its hardest and most gruelling, gritty moments- these memoirs of human experience commune with each of us on a personal level. When read aloud, when represented in the flesh at an event such as this, one can’t help but to admire the writer, just as much as the writing.

Introduction to Non-Fiction

This course is available at the following time(s) and location(s):

There are 40 books on the Canada Reads longlist. Where should you begin? How should you cast your precious votes? Don’t worry: we’re here to help.

Each one of the books on this list will change your perspective on some aspect of the world, and all week, we’ll be exploring which is which. So check back with us every day and pretty soon you’ll know the Top 40 like the back of your hand.

Books that will change your perspective on the future.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s readers are no stranger to her chilling visions of the future, and 2009′s The Year of the Flood is the second book in her MaddAddam trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake. The series is about a post-apocalyptic world in which most of the human population has been wiped out, and genetically engineered hybrid beasts roam the earth. But Atwood’s trilogy is really a warning call about the way we live now.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Set in the near-future, Cory Doctorow’s novel is a technology-infused adventure about a cocky 17-year-old hacker in San Francisco who is mistakenly arrested and accused of terrorist activity. When he is finally let go, he emerges from prison to find that his city has become a police state. With headlines flying around these days about government surveillance, Doctorow’s book is a timely exploration of the hyper-scrutinized world that we might already live in.

Swarm by Lauren Carter

Lauren Carter’s debut novel, Swarm, is also set in the near-future, where Sandy is living a subsistence life of fishing, farming and beekeeping on an island after escaping an urban life plagued by violence and power shortages. A sombre look at a very realistic-looking future of shrinking choices and precarious living.

The Blue Light Project by Timothy Taylor

Yet another familiar near-future narrative, but this one is about a hostage situation at a television studio, the nasty media frenzy that results, and the power of art and beauty to overcome rage and violence. Taylor’s book contains a prescient plot point about smartphone surveillance — read it to find out what else he’ll be proven right about.

Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn

Amber Dawn’s debut novel is a modern fairy tale about a group of lost souls in the underworld of a city that sort of resembles Vancouver. Dawn teaches speculative fiction writing at Douglas College, and her book is an elegant allegory about the important role that memories play in envisioning a future for ourselves.

Would you pay $250 to feel human?
In Amber Dawn’s new book How Poetry Saved My Life is a poem called
“What’s My Mother F***ing Name.” In it, she describes how a client
had sex with her and then said, “Now I feel human again.”
At the time she only cared that he paid $250 an hour. But later she asked herself, “What would I pay to feel human again?”
Amber Dawn was a sex worker. Her poems are tough, funny and touching as she writes about her life in that profession and how people change the subject when the topic arises. It’s still taboo.
But not on the afternoon of Oct. 25 at the Vancouver Writers Fest.
Four authors presented their memoirs.
In Drunk Mom, Jowita Bydlowska describes how she started drinking after giving birth to her son.
With brutal honesty, Bydlowska describes her life of blackouts, endless hunger, and just-one-more-drink while dealing with motherhood, anxiety and depression. This is a book I just couldn’t stop reading. It has the intimacy of a diary and kept me awake all night.
In Projection Priscila Uppal describes her journey to Brazil to find the mother who left her when she was a child.
You may think the reunion between mother and daughter would be very emotional, but it wasn’t. Uppal came to realize that she didn’t love her mother, that she didn’t even like her. Projection is humourous, but it’s also provocative, particularly with regard to family relationships.
Nocturne by Helen Humphreys is a deeply haunting memoir. It takes the form of a letter to Humphreys’ brother, who died of cancer. She writes directly to him, laying bare their secrets and all the things they have shared.
On this afternoon at the Vancouver Writers Fest these four authors read and talk about their books. It’s touching because every book is personal and intense.
I asked, “Is it easier to write a memoir than fiction?”
It may be easier, Jowita Bydlowska answers, but the hard thing is dealing with the critics.
The moderator got in on the discussion: if you are a doctor in the Artic you can fix peoples wounds, and they are good to go. But what if you are injured with no doctor present? You have to put the scalpel against yourself.
And that’s what memoir writing is: putting the scalpel against yourself.
So, how much would you pay to feel human? Reading those books have the power to make us feel very human indeed.

Celebrating the Arts: 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards recipients announced

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Vancouver’s outstanding creative talents, who represent disciplines ranging from performing and visual arts to literary and culinary arts, will be recognized for their achievements with the 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards and the City of Vancouver Book Award.

Mayor Gregor Robertson will present the awards at a special ceremony on November 22 at Telus World of Science. Honourees will be recognized in the categories of studio arts, performing arts and support of the arts (philanthropy, volunteerism, business support and arts board member of the year). The winner of the Vancouver Book Award will be announced at the event.

“This year’s Mayor’s Arts Awards honourees and emerging artists exemplify the tremendous depth and diversity of talent we have in Vancouver,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson. “Our creative community bolsters our city’s cultural vitality and economic well-being, and support for local arts and culture is a top priority of our work at City Hall. On behalf of my colleagues on Vancouver City Council and the citizens of Vancouver, I would like to congratulate these artists and thank them wholeheartedly for their leadership in making this such a creative and vibrant city.”

Each honouree in the studio and performing arts categories is invited to select an emerging artist in their discipline who demonstrates the promise of the next generation.

The 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards recipients (emerging artists indicated in parentheses) are:

Studio Arts: Dominique Brechault (Urszula of ZULA Jewelry + Design) for craft and design; Eric Pateman (Jackie Kai Ellis) for culinary arts; Cari Green (Arun Fryer) for film and new media; George Fetherling (Rahat Kurd) for literary arts; Myfanwy MacLeod (Derek Brunen) for visual arts; Ken R. Lum (Rebecca Bayer) for public art; and Patti Fraser (Kim Villagante) for community engaged arts.

Performing Arts: Karen Jamieson (Josh Martin) for dance; Peggy Lee (Cole Schmidt) for music; and Patrick McDonald (Kyle Jespersen) for theatre.

Support of the Arts: Anndraya Luui for Philanthropy; Merle Smith for volunteerism; BMO Financial Group for business support; Mo Dhaliwal for arts board member of the year.

Lifetime Achievement: Cornelia Hahn Oberlander.

The Vancouver Book Award finalists are: Jancis M. Andrews for The Ballad of Mrs. Smith (Hedgerow Press); Brad Cran for Ink on Paper (Nightwood Editions); Amber Dawn for How Poetry Saved My Life (Arsenal Pulp Press); Harold Kalman and Robin Ward for Exploring Vancouver – The Architectural Guide (Douglas & McIntyre); and Sean Kheraj for Inventing Stanley Park (UBC Press).