Author Iryn Tushabe on honouring the oral tradition in writing

Iryn Tushabe is a Ugandan Canadian writer and journalist living on Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan. Most recently her nonfiction has appeared in Literary Hub, The Walrus and in the trace press anthology river in an ocean: essays on translation. Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories volumes 30 and 33. She was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021 and is a 2023 winner of the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Everything is Fine Here (House of Anansi, 2025) is her debut novel. Iryn explores language as resistance, honouring the oral tradition in writing, and her guidance to writers.

Author Iryn Tushabe. Photo by Robin Schlaht

Language as resistance and honouring the oral tradition in writing

OCW: What life experiences have shaped your writing style? I come from an oral storytelling tradition.

IT: The language of my birth, Rukiga, is largely unwritten. Certainly, the stories my parents shared with me in the moonlight aren’t from any book I can reference. In my own storytelling, I have wanted to honour that orality. Whenever possible, I make space on the page for my mother tongue and other Ugandan languages I speak. Colonialism elevated English above all other Ugandan languages, of which there are many. Whenever I write a story that’s enriched with not just my language, but the knowledge systems embedded within it—proverbs and riddles, say, —I feel a sense of fulfilment in that resistance. Though I write in English and I’m published in the global west, I’m always writing for an East African readership.

The freedom of being a pantser in essays and fiction

OCW: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

IT: I’m a pantser when I write fiction and a quasi-plotter when mapping out some, but not all, nonfiction. With a personal essay, for example, I want the freedom to explore and feel my way through the work. Plotting might get in the way of that. Sometimes you start an essay believing one thing but as you go along, you’re surprised to discover that you’re not entirely sold on the idea. That can be deeply gratifying to see a writer changing their mind over the course of a piece of writing. It’s equally rewarding for the writer. In this way, essaying is not unlike fiction writing. Both require an openness, a willingness to dig deep and excavate far and away from the centre before circling back.

OCW: If you’ve been published, how did you find your first publisher?

IT: My first publisher found me through the Humber School for Writers. As the year-long correspondence mentorship program came to an end, we were invited to write pitches describing the projects we were working on, and these were uploaded to a portal agents and publishers could access. That pitch portal is also how my agent found me.

Nourishing friendships to balance the arduous work of writing

OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

IT: Nourish your friendships. Writing can be arduous. For most of us, sentences don’t flow out of us as water from a natural spring. In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami writes: “I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity.” On some days, writing feels like that for me too. And on those days, it’s nice to go on a walk with a friend or have a conversation with them on the phone. Just to get out of my head and be firmly in the world. A reminder that “writer” is not all I am.

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

IT: I know that the right approach is to draft first and edit later, but there are times when I can’t help myself. Times when the impulse to smooth over a saggy paragraph or to tighten the connective tissue between two scenes is too strong it hampers my progress. So, I’ve learnt to allow myself to do what I need to do.