“Amber Dawn’s poems are rituals of beauty, courage and fierce rage.” –Vancouver Sun 

Amber Dawn is an award-winning writer and creative facilitator who has written eloquently on queer femme sexuality, individual and systemic trauma, and sex work justice. She is a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction, the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize, and has been shortlisted for BC Book Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the BC Book Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.  

Amber Dawn’s latest publication, My Art is Killing Me and Other Poems, is a finalist for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes, and a follow-up to her Vancouver Book Award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life. In this collection, she explores the costs of coming out on the page and the toll that artmaking takes on artists with heartrending honesty.

Author Nancy Lee calls the collection “urgent, necessary and powerful, these poems lay bare the hypocrisy of a society that demands truth then systematically destroys those who dare speak it […] Amber Dawn details the difficult trajectory of creating art from life while navigating institutions steeped in structural oppression. There’s no overstating the value and importance of this book, a lifeline to survivors, a turning point, a reckoning.”  

Website: http://www.amberdawnwrites.com/
Book: https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/M/My-Art-Is-Killing-Me-and-Other-Poems

Appearing in:
13. Brazen Tongues: Celebrating the Unashamed Self