Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters has won the Carol Shields Prize, a new literary award to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States.

When We Were Sisters traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who raise one another after their parents die. Kausar is the youngest, and deals with the loss of their parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; the middle sister Aisha, spars with her “crybaby” younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in a difficult situation; and the eldest Noreen, does her best in the sister-mother role while also trying to create her own life.