This year’s City of Vancouver Book Award has been won by a former sex-trade worker.

Amber Dawn takes home the two-thousand dollar first prize for “How Poetry Saved My Life:  A Hustler’s Memoir”.   It chronicles her life on the street as a sex-trade worker, and how she changed through prose and poetry.

 On her website, Dawn says winning the award is a victory for other sex-trade workers and survivors.

Her unconventional book is published by Arsenal Pulp Press