How Poetry Saved My Life

Vancouver Book Award winner; Lambda Literary Award finalist

A memoir about sex work and sexuality, and how writing became the author's lifeline.

Amber Dawn's acclaimed first novel Sub Rosa, a darkly intoxicating fantasy about a group of magical prostitutes who band together to fend off bad johns in a fantastical underworld, won a Lambda Literary Award in 2011. How Poetry Saved My Life, Amber Dawn's sophomore book, reveals an even more poignant and personal landscape--the terrain of sex work, queer identity, and survivor pride. This story, told in prose and poetry, offers a frank, multifaceted portrait of the author's experiences hustling the streets of Vancouver, and how those years took away her self-esteem and nearly destroyed her; at the crux of this autobiographical narrative is the tender celebration of poetry and literature, which--as the title suggests--acted as a lifeline during her most pivotal moments.

As raw and fiery as its author, How Poetry Saved My Life is a powerful account of survival and the transformative power of literature.