Farzana Doctor wins 2023 Freedom to Read Award

Farzana Doctor has won the 2023Freedom to Read Award.

Doctoris an Ontario novelist, activistand psychotherapist of Indian ancestry who won the 2011 Dayne Ogilvie Prize from the Writers' Trust of Canada for an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer.

The award is givenin recognition of work that is passionately supportive of the freedom to read.

Her novels include 2007'sStealing Nasreen, 2011'sSix Metres of Pavement which won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for a2012 Toronto Book Award andAll Inclusive, published in 2015.

Doctor's most recent work include Seven, a 2020 novel that explores the issue of khatna, also known as female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), within the Dawoodi Bohra community in India, and the debut poetry collection You Still Look the Same.

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Doctorbecame interested in activism and community organizing as a teen, with a focus onenvironmental issues, gender violence and LGBTQ+rights. Sheco-founded the End FGM Canada Network andis avolunteerwithWeSpeakOut, a global group that is working to ban female genital cutting in her Dawoodi Bohra community.

In her novelSeven, a woman namedSharifaaccompanies her husband on a marriage-saving trip to India, and in order to research hergreat-great-grandfather a business-owner and philanthropist. She is fascinated by his four wives, who are never mentioned in her family. At the same time, she tries to reach a middle ground in an ideologically-divided community.

CBC Books namedSevenone of the best Canadian fiction books of 2020.

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The Next Chapter13:08Farzana Doctor on Seven

Farzana Doctor tackles taboo subjects in her new novel Seven.

"Writing is a bit of an addiction at this point. Ever since I started writing my first novel, it was something that I just had to keep going back to. And a day or a week doesn't really feel complete unless I've done some work on some poems or on my novel," Doctor told CBC Books in 2018.

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"What excites me about the current literature scene in Canada is that there havebeen so many new voices, from racialized and Indigenous people. We're seeing the books of these individuals winning awards and doing well with Canadians. There is this growing change, this shift that's happening in CanLit that positions marginalized voices more in the centre."

Doctor was nominated for this year's Freedom to Read Award by Canadian journalist and filmmaker, Giselle Portenier, who focused on Doctor's writing about subjects shrouded in silence and taboo.

"All of Doctor's books have addressed topics of social justice and immigrant life, but it's her fourth novel, Seven, that caught my attention for being especially ground-breaking. It takes up the issue of khatna, or female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in her insular Dawoodi Bohra community," Portenier said in a press release statement.

The Freedom to Read Award ispresented annually by TheWriters' Union of Canadaduring Freedom to Read Week.

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Toronto-based bookseller and event coordinatorAnjula Gogia wonthe 2022 award.

Other past winners include Ivan Coyote, David A. Robertson, Jael Richardson, Gary Geddes, Deborah Campbell, Mohamed Fahmy and Lawrence Hill.

Freedom to Read WeekrunsFeb. 19-25, 2023.