Help us Launch an Anthology of Sex Workers Poetry

Hustling Verse is a trailblazing anthology, in which sixty self-identified sex workers explore lived experience through the expressive nuance and beauty of poetry. One of the first books of its kind, Hustling Verse features authors who have expressed themselves with the complexity, agency, and honesty that sex workers are rarely afforded. 

Contributors from Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia include Gregory Scofield, Tracy Quan, Summer Wright, jaye simpson, Aimee Herman, AK Saini, Courtney Trouble, Aimee Herman, Mercedes Eng, Naomi Sayers, Audacia Ray and Akira the Hustler. 



Hi, we’re Hustling Verse editors Justin Ducharme and Amber Dawn. We’re thrilled to be sharing our forthcoming anthology in Fall 2019. We’ve received a tremendous amount of love from sex worker and allied communities, and from our award-winning and queer-owned publisher Arsenal Pulp Press. 


Between September and November we’ll be celebrating launches in five (or more) major cities—starting with our debut launch at Lambda Litfest in Los Angeles and wrapping with our hometown launch in Incite Reading Series in Vancouver. We have secured travel funds for the two of us, but not for any additional contributors to travel and/or read with us. 


Often writers who read at anthology and other book launches, do so for free as a part of promoting the book. We believe that artists should be paid. Sex worker-identified artist who speak up publicly take a personal risk.. 


We’re asking for support paying our sex worker-identified artists. 


Goal # 1: Get Justin, Amber Dawn and jaye simpson to Lambda Litfest in Los Angeles!


It’s an honour to be invited to Lambda Litfest 2019 for our debut launch with California-based artists Courtney Trouble, Milcah Halili and Garuda Love. 


We plan to travel with the brilliant Oji-Cree Saulteaux Two Spirit poet jaye simpson, and to pay all of the artists who read with us. 


We need $2,000 make our Lambda Litfest launch happen. 



Goal # 2: Pay every reader along our tour!


We have made some heartening progress partnering with organizations that have offered some financial backing, but we still need your help to pay artists.


Our goal is to pay each artist $75 for a 10 minute reading. Twenty of our anthology contributors have confirmed their appearance at launches in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and New York. This is HUGE! Twenty sex worker artists are coming out to represent and celebrate this anthology!


Help us pay them for their talent and creativity on stage. 


We need $1,500 to pay artist reading fees during our tour.




_____________________________________________________________________________

Bios: 

jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux Two Spirit warrior whose roots hail from the Sapotaweyak, Keeseekoose & Skownan Cree Nations. jaye holds firm their rage about being a former youth in care, as well as a queer indigenous person & weaves it into poetry, prose & essays. they are published in Poetry Is Dead Issue 17: Coven, This Magazine: September/October 2018, PRISM 57.1: DREAMS,  SAD Magazine: Green, GUTS Magazine online, and Room 42.1 Magic. they are a displaced indigenous person resisting, ruminating and residing on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations territories.   

Justin Ducharme is a filmmaker, writer, dancer and curator from the small Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory. He is a graduate from Vancouver Film School, and the writer/director of three short narrative films. He has been jigging since the age of 7, performing with The St. Ambroise Youth Steppers and the Louis Riel Métis Dancers. His poetry has been featured in Sex Worker Wisdom and PRISM International magazine. He currently lives and works on Unceded Coast Salish Territory.

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), 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 With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn. She teaches creative writing at Douglas College in Vancouver, and also leads several low-barrier community writing classes.