Q

Sarah Henstra on her Governor General's Literary Award winning book The Red Word

The 2018 winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, Sarah Henstra, talks about her book and her big win.
Sarah Henstra is the winner of the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. (Paola Scattolon)

Each year, the Governor General's Literary Awards celebrate some of Canada's best books in seven categories, in both English and French, including fiction, poetry, non-fiction and young people's literature.

Sarah Henstra is the winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for English fiction for her book, The Red Word. The book takes readers back to an Ivy League school in the mid-'90s, and introduces us to a woman who has found herself split between two worlds.

The character is in a relationship with a man who belongs to a fraternity where the members are notorious for being accused of sexual assault. At the same time, a group of radical feminists have taken her under their wing. What unfolds is a series of events that ignite a conversation about power, consent and how some of the dynamics at play are really nothing new.​

Henstra joins Tom Power live in studio to tell us more about her book and her big win.

Host Tom Power with Sarah Henstra in the q studio in Toronto, Ont. (Vivian Rashotte/CBC)

Produced by ​Cora Nijhawan​

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