Sarah Henstra wins Governor General’s fiction prize

TORONTO — Toronto author Sarah Henstra says she thinks her win at this year’s Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction signals that Canadian readers are hungry for literature that tackles thorny cultural issues.

Henstra is among the winners announced Tuesday for her first foray into adult fiction, “The Red Word,” set at the epicentre of the polarized debate about sexual assault on university campuses.

The novel follows 19-year-old Karen Huls, a Canadian student at a prominent U.S. college in the 1990s, who is awakened to the ambiguities of gender politics after moving in with a group of radical feminist activists while dating a member of a fraternity notorious for misogyny.

When she found out she had won the $25,0000 award, Henstra said she first had to make sure that someone wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on her.

“You sure this isn’t a joke?” Henstra recalled asking a prize administrator, shaking with shock at the news.

A peer review described the work as “groundbreaking and provocative,” and an “astonishing evisceration of the clichés of sexual politics.” The committee also uncharacteristically invoked foul language in their citation to applaud Henstra’s incisive blend of ancient mythology and contemporary issues.

But before the deluge of critical acclaim, Henstra, who also authored the 2015 young adult novel “Mad Miss Mimic,” said she struggled to find a publisher for “The Red Word,” which eventually landed at ECW Press, because of the novel’s prickly subject matter and reluctance to issue black-and-white moral judgments.

“I don’t offer easy answers in the novel, and I think that was difficult for some publishers to imagine how they would frame that for readers,” Henstra said.

The awards will be presented Nov. 28 in a ceremony presided over by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.