2012 Governor General Literary Award Winners

by Sara Mahmood

Canada’s best authors were honoured in Toronto as the Governor General's Literary Awards celebrated its 75th anniversary today.

This year, 1,684 books were submitted for the award. A panel of writers, illustrators, and translators whittled that number down to 70 finalists and eventually 14 winners.

Three of the 14 winners had been awarded this honour in the past. Normand Chaurette, this year’s winner for French-language drama, has also won in 1996 and 2001. Meanwhile, Christopher Moore author of the children’s literature – text award this year also won the non-fiction prize back in 1982. There’s also Donald Winkler, who won this year for his translation of Partita pour Glenn Gould, who also won for a French-to-English translation in 1994. Coincidentally, the author of Partita for Glenn Gould, Georges Leroux, has won in the French non-fiction category this year.

Those authors weren’t the only winners making milestones at the awards.  Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt were shortlisted for all three of Canada’s major fiction prizes – the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, The Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Governor General's. They were both also nominated for Britain’s Man Booker Prize and have each received over $50,000 in prizes, not including their earnings for being nominees.

Over the last 75 years, the Governor General's awards have honoured 511 Canadian writers and illustrators for 607 different works. When the awards were first established in 1936, it was Canada’s first literary award. Only two authors were awarded the prize: one for fiction and the other for non-fiction, and there was no cash prize. In 1959, French works and other categories were added to the awards. Now there are 7 categories, in both French and English, and each winner receives $25,000.The publisher of each winning book also receives $3,000 to help promote the books even more and the other finalists receive $1,000 each.

This year’s winners will receive their awards at a ceremony on Nov. 24 at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

The complete list of winners is as follows:

Fiction:
Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Perrine Leblanc, Montreal, L’homme blanc

Poetry:
Phil Hall, Killdeer
Louise Dupré, Plus haut que les flames

Drama:
Erin Shields, If We Were Birds
Normand Chaurette, Ce qui meurt en dernier

Non-fiction:
Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life & Times
Georges Leroux, Wanderer : essai sur le Voyage d’hiver de Franz Schubert

Children’s Literature (Text):
Christopher Moore, From Then to Now: A Short History of the World
Martin Fournier, Les aventures de Radisson - 1. L’enfer ne brûle pas

Children’s Literature (Illustration):
Cybèle Young, Ten Birds, text by Cybèle Young
Caroline Merola, Lili et les poilus, text by Caroline Merola

Translation:
Donald Winkler, Partita for Glenn Gould
Maryse Warda, Toxique ou L’incident dans l’autobus