Governor General's Literary Awards Finalists

The GGs (as they're known) are the most comprehensive literary awards in Canada. The awards celebrate works in seven categories of both English and French literature, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, children's writing, children's illustration, and translation (both French to English and English to French). This year's list has 70 finalists, which is just too many to write here.

Here are some highlights:

English-language fiction

Sandra Birdsell for Waiting for Joe (Random House Canada)
Emma Donoghue for Room (HarperCollins)
Drew Hayden Taylor for Motorcycles and Sweetgrass (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)
Dianne Warren for Cool Water (Phyllis Bruce Books)
Kathleen Winter for Annabel (House of Anansi Press)

French-language fiction

Marie-Clair Blais for Mai au bal des prédateurs (Les Éditions du Boréal)
Martine Desjardins for Maleficium (Éditions Alto)
Agnès Gruda for Onze petites trahisons (Les Éditions du Boréal)
Dany Laferrière for L'énigme de retour (Les Éditions du Boréal)
Kim Thúy for Ru (Éditions Libre Expressions, Groupe Librex)

English-language poetry

Richard Green for Boxing the Compass (Signal Editions)
Michael Harris for Circus (Signal Editions)
Daryl Hine for &: A Serial Poem (Fitzhenry and Whiteside)
Sandy Pool for Exploding into Night (Guernica Editions)
Melanie Siebert for Deepwater Vee (McClelland & Stewart)

French-language poetry

Francis Catalano for qu'une lueur des lieux (L'Hexagone)
Marie-Josée Charest for Rien que la guerre, c'est tout (Les Herbes rouges)
Carole David for Manuel de poétique à l'intention des jeunes filles (Les Herbes rouges)
Danielle Fournier for effleurés de lumière (L'Hexagone)
Pierre Nepveu for Les verbes majeurs (Éditions de Noroît)

The winner in each category receives $25,000 and the publisher of each winning author also receives $3,000. On top of that, each non-winning finalist – all 56 of them – receive $1,000. That means that the GGs give out $448,000 in one swoop. That is huge, and it means that both writers and publishers have some major incentive to turn out consistently good work.

Congrats to all the finalists. The winners will be announced next month, so stay tuned.

(Image used the logo for the Canada Council for the Arts)