After attend­ing the 2013 Mayor’s Arts Awards in Decem­ber, Sad Mag cor­re­spon­dent Shazia Hafiz Ramji caught up with the fiery but mod­est writer, Amber Dawn, to dis­cuss her genre-crossing mem­oir How Poetry Saved My Life, which won the 2013 Van­cou­ver Book Award. Hav­ing gar­nered numer­ous awards, includ­ing the Lambda Award for her pre­vi­ous book, Sub Rosa, and an award-winning docu­porn, Amber con­tin­ues to achieve more—by retain­ing a can­did, engaged stance in How Poetry Saved My Life. Read on to share Amber’s thoughts on what it means to be a “Hus­tler,” ways of liv­ing and heal­ing in Van­cou­ver, and the role of genre in being “emo­tion­ally accurate.”

Sad Mag: In a recent arti­cle about The Van­cou­ver Book Award in The Globe and Mail, you told the Globe: “I usu­ally don’t say I want to win some­thing, but I really want this.” Con­grat­u­la­tions on hav­ing your desire come true! Why did you really want to win the 2013 Van­cou­ver Book Award?

Amber Dawn: I’ve had some dark days in Van­cou­ver, and I made a promise to this city that if it took care of me that I’d take care of it. I’m keep­ing my promise in the ways that I know how: using my voice, vol­un­teer­ing, activism and ongo­ing learn­ing. How Poetry Saved My Life shows aspects of this city that not every­one sees directly; how­ever, I believe issues of sex work, risk and vio­lence against women are pal­pa­ble in every Van­cou­verites’ mind. We know that the num­ber of miss­ing and mur­dered women in this city is inex­cus­ably high. We know that the city is chang­ing in ways that causes home­less­ness to con­tinue to rise. We all won­der what to do, and how to heal from the trau­mas we col­lec­tively feel or wit­ness. I wrote my book in part because I wanted to remind Van­cou­verites that there is always some­thing we can do, there is always some way we can heal.

SM: Even though your book is cat­e­go­rized as a mem­oir, you employ many gen­res. Why did you decide to use many gen­res?
AD: I did not start of by say­ing, “I want to write a mixed-genre prose and poetry book.” But as I wrote, I came to under­stand that my story couldn’t be told through a sin­gle pro­saic “con­fes­sional mem­oir” chrono­log­i­cal narrative—from incit­ing moment, to so-called rock-bottom, to redemp­tion. Whose life is really like that? That mem­oir for­mula is far too tidy to tell most of our life sto­ries. To be emo­tion­ally accu­rate and true to my expe­ri­ences I needed to use poetry, essay and short mem­oir. I needed the dynamism of all three.

SM: Please dis­cuss the deci­sion mak­ing process around using the word “hus­tler” in the title of your book.
AD: I love the term “sex worker.” I love the his­tory of that term—the his­tory of explic­itly nam­ing sex work as work. I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing Mar­got St James and Carol Leigh, aka The Scar­lot Har­lot, two early San Francisco-based sex work activists who have taught me to take pride in the his­tory of our move­ment. But my book and my iden­tity are about more than just sex work. Class, sur­vivor­ship and queer­ness are promi­nent themes in the book too (they can’t be sep­a­rated). I felt “hus­tler” encom­passed more of who I am. “Hus­tler” can mean to move through some­thing or to take a gam­ble, a risk. Sure, I hus­tled as a sex worker. I also hus­tled my way through uni­ver­sity. I’m hus­tling my way up the class lad­der. I’ve hus­tled French women in a Parisian dyke bar …

SM: How do you feel now that you’ve won the 2013 Van­cou­ver Book Award?
AD: What does it say about our City to name a scrappy, queer, sex worker mem­oir as the 2013 Book? I hope it says that Van­cou­ver wants to be inclu­sive, broad-minded and vocal. I hope it says that Van­cou­ver wants to hear from under-represented peoples—and that we’re not afraid of top­ics like sex, poverty and sur­vival. With this hope, I feel awe­some about win­ning. I want to high five every­one I see.

SM: What are you cur­rently work­ing on?
AD: I’m work­ing on a mag­i­cal real­ism novel called “Sodom Road Exit”—set in Crys­tal Beach, Ontario (the for­mer site of Crys­tal Beach Amuse­ment Park) dur­ing the years 1990 and 1991. After drop­ping out of the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto and rack­ing up sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial debt, my pro­tag­o­nist, Bai­ley, moves home to Crys­tal Beach to live with her mother. Her arrival coin­cides with the after­math of the amuse­ment park’s bank­ruptcy and clo­sure, which leaves Crys­tal Beach a ghost town, both finan­cially and lit­er­ally. It’s a ghost story. Magic and ghosts (and a few sex work­ers, too).

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Fol­low Amber Dawn @AmberDawnWrites, keep apprised of inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ing at Arse­nal Pulp Press, @Arsenalpulp, and visit Shazia to keep cool @Shazia_R