Ugandan-Canadian writer Iryn Tushabe’s debut novel Everything Is Fine Here has been nominated for the 2026 Evergreen Award, Canada’s adult reading program within the Forest of Reading. The Ontario Library Association announced ten nominees in late October, seven of which are debut works, marking what the selection committee calls the “Year of the Debut.” The award, which draws over 270,000 Canadian readers annually, will be decided by public vote in September 2026, with the winner announced during Ontario Public Library Week in October.

Tushabe, a Regina-based writer and journalist, brings considerable literary credentials to her first novel. She won the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize in 2023, was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021, and has won the City of Regina Writing Award twice. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, Briarpatch Magazine, and on CBC Saskatchewan. Everything Is Fine Here follows eighteen-year-old Aine Kamara, whose world shifts when her older sister Mbabazi arrives at her Ugandan boarding school with Achen, her girlfriend. Set entirely in Uganda against the backdrop of the country’s anti-homosexuality laws, the novel navigates the tensions between family loyalty, cultural conformity, and queer love. When their devout Christian mother issues an ultimatum, Aine must choose between her family and her sister’s right to love freely.

The novel’s restraint is its greatest strength. Tushabe told Writer’s Digest that her first draft was driven by rage at Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws and religious hypocrisy, but that version failed. The final work emerged only when she allowed her characters to be themselves: flawed, funny, tender, human. Tushabe writes Uganda without explaining it to Western audiences, weaving Luganda phrases and cultural references naturally into the narrative. Everything Is Fine Here is published by House of Anansi Press, Canada’s leading independent literary press.

Here are the 10 books nominated for the 2026 Evergreen Award:

  1. All the Parts We Exile: A Memoir by Roza Nozari (Knopf Canada)
  2. Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe (House of Anansi Press)
  3. Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS by Ardra Shephard (Douglas & McIntyre)
  4. Horsefly by Mireille Gagné (Coach House Books)
  5. It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body by Kate Gies (Scribner Canada)
  6. Seventhblade by Tonia Laird (ECW Press)
  7. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan (Viking Canada)
  8. Waiting for the Long Night Moon by Amanda Peters (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.)
  9. What I Know About You by Éric Chacour (Coach House Books)
  10. Where the Jasmine Blooms by Zeina Sleiman (Roseway Publishing)