Libby Leshgold Gallery, in partnership with On Edge Reading Series, is pleased to present a conversation between Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme as part of our renewed Curators on Curating lecture series. For many years the gallery has presented discussions showcasing unique voices in curatorial practice, and our current series focuses on the myriad ways artists inhabit the role of curator – in relation to institutions, the profession, their communities and each other. Reoriented towards a conversational format, Artist-Curators on Curating explores creative exchange, presentation in an expanded field, and ideas in process.

This first talk will feature a conversation between writer, editor and educator Amber Dawn and filmmaker and writer Justin Ducharme. Together and separately, they have developed a “by us for us” practice of making, curating and organizing, and will talk through the intricacies of their ongoing community-engaged work. Copies of their co-edited volume Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry (now in its 3rd printing!) will be available for purchase via READ Books.

Amber Dawn is a writer and creative facilitator living on unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Her debut novel Sub Rosa (2010) won the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction and the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize. Her memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir (2013) won the Vancouver Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins (2015) was a finalist for BC Book Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her sophomore novel Sodom Road Exit (2018) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the BC Book Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She is the editor of three anthologies With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (co-ed. Trish Kelly, 2005), Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire (2009) and Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry (co-ed. Justin Ducharme, 2019).

Justin Ducharme is a writer, filmmaker and curator from the Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory. He was selected as a fellow in the Sundance Film Festival’s 2022 Native Film Lab with his television pilot “Positions” adapted from his short film of the same name. He was the recipient of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Barry Avrich Fellowship and is an alumni of their 2021 TIFF Filmmaker Lab. Justin is also the co-editor of Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers Poetry published by Arsenal Pulp Press. His writing has been featured in Canadian Art, Room Magazine, Prism International and Filmmaker Mag. He currently lives and works on the Unceded Coast Salish Territory colonially known as Vancouver