Modern Whore: A Memoir

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PRODUCED BY SEAN BAKER.
Oh, the places a whore will go: Strip clubs, four-star hotels, stinking basement apartments, luxury cottages. A striking memoir by Andrea Werhun and Nicole Bazuin documents Andrea’s sex work career in lush photography and powerful words--in all its slippery, sexy, silly and sometimes heartbreaking glory.

Andrea Werhun’s sex work career gave her money, freedom, joy, and a lot of dick. A natural performer, she revelled in the opportunity to invent Mary Ann, her escort counterpart, and introduce her to men all over the city. She whores, she learns, she writes it all down, and then, as per a signed document she handed to her Catholic mother in her early twenties, she quits. To become a stripper.

Andrea and Nicole revisit the idea of the modern whore, with the enhanced perspective of Andrea’s experience at the strip club. This new, engorged edition of the sold-out memoir-cum-art book expands on the original concept--a series of vignettes exploring the many identities sex workers adopt in the service of their clients and in the eyes of the public--in both a literal and literary way. But Andrea doesn’t shy away from the serious side of sex work, either, exploring the risks sex workers take, and the rights our culture is constantly taking away from them.

This series of stories and portraits investigate the many ways we imagine--and mistake--the modern whore. It’s Playboy if the Playmates were in charge.

Writer, performer, and sex worker advocate ANDREA WERHUN is a peer outreach worker with Maggie’s: Toronto Sex Workers Action Project and has given university lectures, led workshops, hosted and participated on panels, and performed countless readings of her work. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto (2012), with a major in English and a double minor in Religion and Paradigms & Archetypes. She has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, VICE, CBC, and Hazlitt, and posed nude alongside her essay about sex work for the 65th Anniversary print issue of Playboy. Award-winning artist and filmmaker NICOLE BAZUIN is the creator/director of the comedy art show This Art Works! (CBC), and the doc series Climate Talks With Kids (Bell TV). Her film Sleeping With Family was an official selection at the Hot Docs Film Festival. Nicole’s media artworks have been exhibited in the Art Gallery of Ontario, and commissioned by festivals such as Nuit Blanche and Luminato. She is co-founder of Madeleine Co., an all-female interdisciplinary art collective reimagining social issues through experiential storytelling and multimedia art.