My Art is Killing Me

and Other Poems

Amber Dawn
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press

Book Description

In her novels, poetry, and prose, Amber Dawn has written eloquently on queer femme sexuality, individual and systemic trauma, and sex work justice, themes drawn from her own lived experience and revealed most notably in her award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life.

In this, her second poetry collection, Amber Dawn takes stock of the costs of coming out on the page in a heartrendingly honest and intimate investigation of the toll that artmaking takes on artists. These long poems offer difficult truths within their intricate narratives that are alternately incendiary, tender, and rapturous.

In a cultural era when intersectional and marginalized writers are topping bestseller lists, Amber Dawn invites her readers to take an unflinching look at what we expect from writers, and from each other.

Includes a foreword by writer Doretta Lau.

Author Bio

Amber Dawn is the author of the novels Sodom Road Exit (2018) and Sub Rosa (winner of a Lambda Literary Award, 2010), the Vancouver Book Award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life (2013), and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize-nominated poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins (2015). She is also editor of Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire and co-editor of Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry and With a Rough Tongue. Her most recent book is My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems. She teaches creative writing at Douglas College in Vancouver, and also leads several low-barrier community writing classes.