Farzana Doctor has won the 2023 Freedom to Read Award.

Doctor is an Ontario novelist, activist and 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 given in recognition of work that is passionately supportive of the freedom to read.

Her novels include 2007's Stealing Nasreen, 2011's Six Metres of Pavement — which won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for a 2012 Toronto Book Award — and All 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.

Doctor became interested in activism and community organizing as a teen, with a focus on environmental issues, gender violence and LGBTQ+ rights. She co-founded the End FGM Canada Network and is a volunteer with WeSpeakOut, a global group that is working to ban female genital cutting in her Dawoodi Bohra community. 

In her novel Seven, a woman named Sharifa accompanies her husband on a marriage-saving trip to India, and in order to research her great-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 named Seven one of the best Canadian fiction books of 2020.

"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.

"What excites me about the current literature scene in Canada is that there have been 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 is presented annually by The Writers' Union of Canada during Freedom to Read Week.

Toronto-based bookseller and event coordinator Anjula Gogia won the 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 Week runs Feb. 19-25, 2023.