My Art is Killing Me and Other Poems

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 we expect from writers, and from each other.

Includes a foreword by writer Doretta Lau (How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? ).

About the Author

Amber Dawn is a poet, memoirist and novelist. She is the author of the novels Sub Rosa (Lambda Literary Award winner) and Sodom Road Exit, the Vancouver Book award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life, and the BC Book Prize-nominated poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins. She is also the editor or co-editor of numerous anthologies, including Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers' Poems. She teaches creative writing at Douglas College.