1979 Governor General's Awards

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Each winner of the 1979 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The 1979 awards were the first in which a list of finalists was released a month before the presentation of the awards. This was done to attract more publicity.

English Language

Fiction

Winner:

• Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne

Other Finalists:

• Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man
• Matt Cohen, The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone

Poetry and Drama

Winner:

• Michael Ondaatje, There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do

Other Finalists:

• Erin Mouré, Empire, York Street
• Susan Musgrave, A Man to Marry, a Man to Bury

Non-fiction

Winner:

• Maria Tippett, Emily Carr

Other Finalists:

• Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, C.D. Howe
• Larry Pratt and John Richards, Prairie Capitalism

French Language

Fiction

Winner:

• Marie-Claire Blais, Le Sourd dans la ville

Other Finalists:

• Suzanne Jacob, La Survie
• Suzanne Paradis, Miss Charlie

Poetry and Drama

Winner:

• Robert Mélançon, Peinture aveugle

Other Finalists:

• Marcel Bélanger, Migrations
• André Roy, Les passions du samedi

Non-fiction

Winner:

• Dominique Clift and Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos, Le fait anglais au Québec

Other Finalists:

• Daniel Latouche, Une société de l'ambiguïté
• Pierre Nepveu, Les mots à l'écoute

Other Governor General's Awards

v t e   Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit English-language awards Fiction Non-fiction Poetry (1981–present) Drama (1981–present) Poetry or drama (1937–1980) Children's literature Children's illustration French to English translation French-language awards Fiction Non-fiction Poetry (1981–present) Drama (1981–present) Poetry or drama (1959–1980) Children's literature Children's illustration English to French translation Awards by year 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011