LAMBDA Litfest reading by the contributors of “Hustling Verse”

September 25 @ 7:30 pm

Skylight Books presents LAMBDA Litfest reading by the contributors of “Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers Poetry.” This book is a fiercely groundbreaking exploration of intimacy, transactional sex, identity, healing, and resilience.

Hustling Verse (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Pre Order Hustling Verse from Skylight Books

In Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers Poetry, more than fifty self-identified sex workers  explore their lived experience through the expressive nuance and beauty of poetry. Hustling Verse is a fiercely groundbreaking exploration of intimacy, transactional sex, identity, healing, and resilience. Join editors Justin Ducharme and Amber Dawn, and local contributors, Milcah Halili and Garuda Love, in celebrating sex worker creativity and truth. 

Justin Ducharme was born and raised in the small Metis community of St. Ambroise, Manitoba. He is a graduate of Vancouver Film School and the writer/director of three short films, most recently the 2018 drama Positions, which tells the story of a queer, Indigenous, male sex worker in Vancouver. Justin has been a Metis dancer since the age of ten and is passionate about dance, radicalizing Indigenous “Canadian” Cinema, and writing poetry about the people who broke his heart and the ones who paid to do so.

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). 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.

Milcah Halili (they/he) is a nonbinary writer, web developer, and performer. They write about intersectionality, cannabis, sexuality, and web development. They’ve been published in Coming Out Like a Porn Star, Witch Craft Mag, The Rumpus, and Filthy Media. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, April Flores.

Courtney Trouble is a writer and artist living in california via the pnw currently interested in gender, data, and chaos as inspirational topics for works largely informed by the Dada style. they also make semi-autobiographical photographic work and run an indie porn distro, perform and produce porn, and coach other queer sex workers in porn. this is an excerpt from their mfa thesis in studio arts practice entitled queer chaos/the queen’s dictionary. Event date: Wednesday, September 25, 2019 – 7:30pmEvent address: 1818 N Vermont AveLos Angeles, CA 90027

Garuda Love was born in Georgia, but currently lives in Los Angeles. She is an MFA candidate at Antioch University, and an assistant editor for Lunch Ticket. Her writing can be found in South 85 Journal and Recovery Today Magazine. Garuda was a sex worker from 1991–2002, where she worked in Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, San Diego,and LA.

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.